By Mike Smith, Meteorological Musings
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said 7,000 megawatts of generating capacity tripped [“tripped” means failed]Tuesday night, leaving the state without enough juice. That’s enough capacity to power about 1.4 million homes. By rotating outages, ERCOT said it prevented total blackouts.
“We have the double whammy of extremely high demand, given the lowest temperatures in 15 years, combined with generation that’s been compromised and is producing less than expected or needed,” said Oncor spokeswoman Catherine Cuellar. Oncor operates power lines in North Texas and facilitated the blackouts for ERCOT.
— above from the “Dallas Morning News”
The article didn’t give a clue as to what generating capability failed, but I can make a pretty good guess: Wind energy.
When the wind is light, the turbine blades do not turn. And, the coldest nights usually occur with snow cover and light winds. The 9pm weather map for the region is below. The red number at upper right is the current temperature and they are well below zero deep into New Mexico and parts of Kansas and Colorado, so regional power use is high. Springfield, CO was already -15°F. Temperatures are in the single digits and teens over most Texas with very light winds in the areas where the turbines are located.
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| Map courtesy National Center for Atmospheric Research |
For a time, Texas was bragging about being the #1 state for “wind power” (it still is) and we were bombarded with TV commercials and newspaper editorial touting the “Pickens Plan” for massive spending on wind energy. Pickens himself was building a huge wind farm in northwest Texas. He has now ceased construction.
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| Wind power capacity in 2008. Texas has more than twice as
much as any other state. |
Now, because of relying so much on wind power, the state is suffering blackouts. My book’s publisher, Greenleaf Book Group in Austin, was without power all day and Austin wasn’t even affected by the recent winter storm. Mexico is trying to help by shipping power to Texas, but it is not enough.
Of course, Great Britain has experienced wind power failures (and rolling blackouts) during cold weather due to light winds. So has Minnesota, just last winter. I think we should learn from them.
If Texas had made the same dollar investment in new coal and/or nuclear power plants they would probably be snug and warm tonight. Do we we really want to sacrifice our families’ safety and security along with business productivity during extreme cold for the sake of political correctness?
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Also FYI – Texas wind power induced blackouts happened in 2008, see this story.
See Mike Smith’s book on “how science tamed the weather”.
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UPDATE: 2/3
THE PLOT THICKENS. Please read the addition to this story (at the bottom): http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/02/equal-time-american-wind-energy.html
Too bad skeptics can be paid for being right most of the time.
I believe it was two power plants, one coal and one gas fired.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/02/02/whats-behind-the-blackouts-power-plants-not-designed-for-cold-weather/
I read that story. What I didn’t understand (give me the dunce hat award) but doesn’t it require more energy to cool Texas when it’s hot vs. energy when it’s cold? Or are air conditioners hard wired to run all the time while heat is an extra burden? I also noticed that private homes were the only ones affected. The article was careful to point out that industry was not included in the blackouts. That’s strange and not very condusive for quality of life for the masses. The article reminded me of the Enron blackouts in California.
More details on exactl;y which power PLANTS failed:
http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/drc/localnews/stories/DRC_Blackouts_0203.117a7ba23.html
I’m pretty cheesed about having to go through the rolling blackouts today – and with no warning! Just saw the local hospital director on the news saying that it would have been a lot easier to cope with if someone would have told them the power was going to be cut! Of course the hospitals have backup generators, but they had to scramble to put them online when all the power was cut with no warning at 7 am this morning.
Nobody in charge thought it was important to let anyone know in advance. Brilliant.
One other thing I’ve heard is that there was a big drop in pressure in the nat gas pipelines, due to a host of backup generation facilities all being kicked on at the same time and with no overall coordination. This only aggravated the problems the grid was having. Of course, a lot of these backup facilities exist to keep the grid supplied when the wind generators go down.
It appears to have been a bad day for Al G.
Really?
It took me less than two seconds to find this:
Early explanations for the widespread unit outages were slim. One state regulator — the Texas Railroad Commission — said power outages affected some fuel deliveries to gas-fired power plants, forcing them to reduce power output.
Rolling blackouts hit gas processing plants operated by Kinder Morgan and Enterprise Products Partners LP, which crimped deliveries to the Frontera electric plant in McAllen, the commission said.
Near Dallas-Fort Worth, frozen pipeline compressors spurred Atmos Mid-Tex to curtail gas deliveries to 300 industrial customers, it said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110203/us_nm/us_ercot_rollingblackots_5
No mention, anywhere, of turbines not “turbining.”
REPLY: I think what Mike was trying to point out is that the wind power didn’t pick up the load…it was offline for the most part too. Had it been online, the blackouts might not have been needed. – Anthony
I sincerely hope the Texans and many others will collectively sue the wind energy companies, as well as the states that force this nonsense to their people, for their inability to provide reliable energy when the people need it most.
this story reminds me of this one: “Power Blip Jolts Supply of Gadget Chips” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703766704576009071694055878.html
An Excerpt: “Toshiba’s troubles started early Wednesday when, according to power supplier Chubu Electric Power Co., there was a sudden drop in voltage that caused a 0.07-second power interruption at Toshiba’s Yokkaichi memory-chip plant in Mie prefecture.”
This very short interruption will reduce Toshiba’s chip production by “…up to 20% next year.”
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/business/asia/japan/2010/12/10/283067/Toshiba-says.htm
Wind power?
What a complete mis-allocation of resources and waste of money!
At some point, the insanity has to end.
That is an interesting theory (not true in this case), but the winds in many parts of Texas rarely cease. I thought that the idea of the wind power was to create excess power, not be the only source?
Note: 1 megawatt will power about 200 homes. 7,000 megawatt loss means 1.4 million homes would be affected.
The cause of the recent rolling blackouts was the failure of two coal power plants, due to water pipes that burst.
An additional 50 plants, that should have been on the grid to cover for those two had other weather related problems that lowered their capacity. Natural gas power plants that should have provided back up had difficulty starting due to low pressure in the supply lines, also caused by the cold weather.
I’m not sure how the wind power generation played into it, but the primary cause was burst water pipes at two coal plants, and difficulties getting natural gas plants running, both due to the cold. Demand is well below summer peak demand, even with the cold temperatures, but between failing plants and normal maintenance rotation, capacity fell below demand. Also, Mexico stepped in and provided some MW, which helped reduce the need for blackouts.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7409400.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/03/us-ercot-rollingblackouts-idUSTRE71213420110203
Brad, your news story said one plant shut down because it had “a frozen pile of coal.”
Hrm… I can’t quite figure that one out. If it’s exposed to snow and ice, it’s exposed to the rain, so moisture isn’t the issue. Doesn’t the plant have a front-end loader or other handy machines that can break the stuff up?
Ah, the perils of guessing.
“REPLY: I think what Mike was trying to point out is that the wind power didn’t pick up the load…it was offline for the most part too. Had it been online, the blackouts might not have been needed. – Anthony”
But isn’t that exactly the opposite of what wind power is designed to do? All these new gas plants are the ones designed to go on and off line quickly for peaking loads.
I think what Mike was trying to point out is that the wind power didn’t pick up the load…it was offline for the most part too.
Uh, I haven’t read anything about the turbines being off-line. Maybe I’d better put my glasses on and re-read the post.
All I read was that he was “guessing” that that was what happened. Is “guessing” good enough, now?
As others have pointed out, it seems that a couple of *coal* fired plants went down and trigger the crisis.
Ooops.
Davesix;
Stein’s Law: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
George Turner-
Actually, many newer plants cannot use old fashioned tractors and the like to move coal at the rates they need, they often have it in a large hopper type of thing and the coal is pulled off the bottom via conveyer belt – I think they mean that coal did not flow down the hopper to the conveyor belt and was frozen or stuck, thus coal did not move to the boilers. Just specualtion, but makes sense.
All I can say is LOL. 🙂
Here’s an article from Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/02/us-ercot-rollingblackots-idUSTRE7116ZH20110202?feedType=RSS
It goes through a list of causes. Frozen Generators. Pipelines shut down. etc.
Nothing about the windmills not windmilling. Or even “underwindmilling.”
Actually, it’s starting to sound, to me, like the windmills were the ONLY thing working.
Billions of dollars later, wind doesn’t really help at all?
Here is the best study on intermitent sources so far, and we should be fine to incorporate the planned wind and solar:
http://www.powergenworldwide.com/index/display/wire-news-display/1343368527.html
Anthony,
Thank you…that is EXACTLY what I was trying to say. If the money had been spent on conventional power plants, nuclear or coal, there would be power tonight. But, because of the calm winds, there isn’t any output from the wind turbines.
Mike
TX Loads for previous day (2-01): http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/20110201_actual_loads_of_weather_zones
Note: The cold weather hit in the wee hours of the morning; we were down to 32 deg F at about 3:30 AM CST and 20 degrees at 7 AM. In the evening it was down to about 14 degrees at 9 PM with wind (as well as wind all day).
TX Loads for today (2-02): http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/20110202_actual_loads_of_weather_zones
The temperature this morning (the 2nd) was 12 deg F. with some wind. It is now 17.5 deg F at 11:16 PM CST. Some wind but nothing like yesterday.
My previous post on this subject re: the cause and a Texas PUC member comment on same.
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“Actually, it’s starting to sound, to me, like the windmills were the ONLY thing working.”
Incorrect. There is no wind tonight. See map above. You can check the current map of the generating region here: http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/surface/displaySfc.php?region=abi&endDate=20110203&endTime=-1&duration=0