The irony of this event is oh so delicious
Nearly half of Texas' installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.
Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend's
freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.
Texas grid operators urge conservation as frozen wind turbines freeze up electric generation.
www.statesman.com
They should have thought of the worst case scenario and yet they never do because then how else can they have an excuse to let people have no power during a cold snap the might rival 1899 cold snap...
Every winter, in one part of the country, or another, the windmills freeze up and stop producing electricity. This is a regular occurance.
A couple years ago, 18% of Minnesota's grid went down. Windmills and and solar panels produce 18% of Minnesota's electrical output.
It's winter, right? Get your flashlights and thermal underwear out. The difference is, Tucker bitched about it on the teevee. Now all the anti-greenies are in an uproar.
I hate to break it to you, but failure of wind turbines was only 13% of the failures causing the blackouts in Texas, the bulk of it is due to frozen instruments at the natural gas installations. The head of the
Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said the causes of the blackout:
First, some power plants may not have been operational due to routine maintenance, Cohan said. Peak demand typically occurs in the summer, so it's not unexpected for a coal or natural gas plant to be offline in an effort to tune up for the warmer months.
Second, some power plants may have failed to operate in the cold, Cohan said. "Plants are optimized to run under our typical and our extreme summer conditions but they aren't as well prepared and engineered for extreme cold," he said.
According to Rai, if plants operate for too long in too extreme of conditions, it could be too costly to operate as well as cause damage to the equipment, which could further exacerbate the outages for longer periods of time.
Third, some natural gas plants may not have been able to get adequate supply of gas to be converted into electricity, Cohan said. Unlike a coal plant that has an ready stockpile, natural gas plants don't store as much on site, meaning any disruption at the supply source will lead to a disruption in turning on the lights.
Texas planning for Texans or the failure to do so, it the problem.