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
Texas has, I think, three nuclear power plants with a total of five units. How many of those went down because of the weather? Zip as near as I can find.
Go back to 2006 and read the Dallas Morning News and look at the campaign to kill the half dozen new power plants. The DMN, mayors including Bill White and the environmental lobby succeeded in preventing the approval of a half dozen new power plants proposed by Texas Utilities.
Then go to the web site of the Texas Public Utilities and look at the additions to the power grid since 2006.
http://www.puc.state.tx.us/electric/maps/index.cfm
This relates back to the story about China and the MSR. They are developing a system to provide cheap, reliable electrical power. The USA on the other hand is developing the most expensive forms of electrical generation while driving up the cost of conventional generation and regulating nuclear out of existence.
“Kristoffer Haldrup says:
February 2, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Coming from a country, Denmark, where 20%+ of the generating capacity is based on windmills and where blackouts are Exceptionally rare, this and related “wind power” posts were a hoot to read and quite in line with my impression of the author&readership of WUWT in general, exceptions noted:)
-The trick to providing a stable energy supply based to a large extent on intermittent renewables (or failing coal plants, for that matter…)? An inter-regional, modern electricity grid, which is what the US most certainly does not have in most regions.”
Apparently you aren’t aware that Denmark exports most of the wind power to Sweden, which has a Hydro/Nuclear based power system which can handle sudden changes in power availability (and laws that require users to buy wind power whether they want or not).
Also Denmark can easily import reliable hydro power from Norway and Sweden whenever needed. Remember that no grid is yet smart enough to create power out of nothing.
In the UK very cold periods in the winter are usually caused by a stationary high pressure region with clear skies and no winds. It happens every cold winter for a period of a week or so. One happened in December, and the result was that wind power generation, normally around 2% of supply, vanished. The zone typically covers quite a large area, the whole of the UK and coastal regions.
There are some countries that simply cannot make wind power a substantial percentage of their generating capacity for geographical climate reasons, and the UK is one of them. Every bit of wind generating capacity you install has to be 100% backed up by conventional, and it has to be available at fairly short notice throughout the winter, because although you know that one of these episodes is very likely, as the Met Office has found out, predicting them is very very difficult.
So the real capital cost of your wind power installations is not what it seems. You have to add to it the full capital cost of the backup conventional plants. So the comparison is
capital costs: wind + conventional versus conventional only
running costs: wind + conventional versus conventional only
I am sure you save something by not burning as much conventional fuel, but this is what can be applied to ROI on the wind plant. And by the time you add in the maintenance costs for each…? I have never seen a proper study of this stuff, but it seems very doubtful that if you look at it in these terms, there is any way wind can pay for itself.
Of course, if you try to have 20-30% of your power generation from wind with no backup, get ready for a national disaster one week in December. Or January. Or February. With only a few days warning, and with a lot of false alarms.
Well, they did have a lowest temperature in 15 years.
That is not supposed to happen, ever…
The whole bird-shredder industry is a complete waste of money.
This is from today’s Express –
INEFFICIENT WINDFARMS “RAISE COST OF ENERGY”
UK windfarms last year operated at only 24% of their capacity
DISTURBING figures released yesterday showed UK windfarms last year operated at only 24% of their capacity. And during the bitter pre-Christmas period the figure fell as low as 5.8% efficiency because there was so little wind. The Renewable Energy Foundation, which carried out the research, said reliance on wind power will lead to higher prices for consumers. It also means conventional power stations will be needed to provide back-up.
Report co-author Dr John Constable, said: “Wind power can be highly variable.” He warned this meant the UK would never be able to dramatically cut conventional generation. And he added: “The result of such uncertainties is higher prices to consumer.”
Michael Hird of anti- windfarm group Country Guardian said: “This means spending billions to provide conventional power stations for when the windfarms are not working.”
…Got that? In the big freeze, when we needed the most power, the bird-shredders produced a massive 5.8% efficiency.
That’s incredibly smart to reinvest in coal and nuclear. The world has an infinite supply of coal and we always can call upon the efficiency of Chernobyl as a prime example of nuclear power at it’s best.
Hey dummies….multiple power sources.. wind, geothermal, solar, R & D for radiant energy and better battery sources….and locally placed kinetic energy recovery systems to stabilize during brown-outs, and just good, old fashioned architecture that accommodates minimum energy consumption, like what those primitives did back in the day before air conditioning and central heating.
We have the technology today to enable buildings to generate their own electricity. The main power grid should be the backup, while modern architecture and retrofits are made as grid tie ins. You’d still have the need for utility service because you’d need a large number of trained employees to keep the grid-tie ins stable. Today it’s the reverse, because America hates innovators and the prospect of high end investment into technological breakthroughs…like the kind Bell Labs once practiced that lead to the transistor…back in the day when capitalism was functional. The investor class has already placed it’s bets on this country rotting into a third world mess.
nc says:
Two plants failed, what was their output? Spinning reserve might be able to take up the slack depending on the amount of generation lost. Usually when there is a sudden shortage of generation there is load shedding and industrial load is usually the first to go off line. With spinning reserve and load shed working together the system should stay intack. …..
…. I am speaking with 35 years experience as a power system operator/dispatcher.
I trump that. This is my 40th year as a Power System Operator/Dispatcher. 🙂
However you are quite correct. Spinning Reserve and interuptible loable has to serve two purposes. First of all the is Fast Instaneous Reserve (FIR) that has the sole purpose of stopping the rate of decline in the frequency when the largest single event on the system occurs. . This is usually the tripping of the largest connected generator, but can also be a critical transmission circuit that will disconnect a group of generators. Traditional thermal plant is ideal for this, while Gas Turbines are hopeless and sometimes even counter the effect and add to frequency drop. Here in New Zealand FIR is the increase in delivered power that is provided in 6 seconds and held for 30 seconds.
Next there is Sustained Instanteneous Reserve (SIR) that is to help the frequency recover to within normal limits. We count that as the average increase in power delivered in 30 seconds and held for 15 minutes. Hydro, and gas Turbines come into their own for this.
Both types of reserve are there to cover the largest single contingency, often referred to as n-1. In this case it appears there were multiple events, and no power system can be expected to carry sufficient reserve for more than n-1. However I’m not sure of the size of the plant that tripped with respect to the largest palnt on the system. If both coal plants were smaller than say the largest nuke, then questions should be asked as to whether sufficient spinning reserve was being carried.
@ur momisugly George Turner says:
February 2, 2011 at 10:34 pm
“Brad, I guess in the old days they would’ve just shoved a couple sticks of dynamite in the pile to loosen it up. I had a 1920′s copy of the DuPont Blaster’s Handbook which recommended dynamite for loosening frozen coal and gravel in railroad cars. They also had lots of uses around the house … ”
Thanks George enjoyed that one. My mind visualised possible uses ‘around the house’ with my 3 teenagers.
We’re having cyclones and floods up north, floods and bushfires down south and a little break from the heat here in Melbourne. I
‘m hoping to find out how the wind farm in the way of Yasi faired. Showed my lad the videos of the exploding fans from the other thread. This is such a great site for showing sciency stuff to kids. Also showed them the last data feeds from Willis Is – excellent stuff Anthony.
Thanks again Anthony, mods, posters and commentators. Best site evah.
Cheers Jack
Kum Dollison says: February 2, 2011 at 11:33 pm
“Well, I don’t know about Texas, but it was 25 degrees here this morning, and the wind was blowing like crazy … As far as I can see the Wind Turbines did what was expected …”
One thing about wind turbines is that they also have a maximum wind speed, above which they shut down to prevent damage.
The Suzlon S88 2.1 MW turbine (used in a local windfarm) has a shutdown wind speed of 25m/s, 56 mph or 49 knots. And don’t forget this is the wind speed 80 metres above the ground.
So when it is “blowing like crazy” windfarms may be generating nothing. Also this shutdown can happen across an entire wind farm almost instantaneously if the wind picks up in a winter storm.
Misinformation here, including in the OP is stunning. No due diligence by Mike Smith. What an utter FAIL.
First of all Texas doesn’t pay for wind turbines. “We” didn’t spend billions. The subject line itself is 100% unadulterated drivel. Texas spends less than $2 million per year on wind subsidies and these “subsidies” are nothing more than property tax incentives of the same kind given to land used for agriculture, wildlife sanctuaries, and historical monuments.
http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/energy/subsidies/index.php#wind
Federal subsidies, in the form of tax incentives, are quite a bit larger – on the order of half a billion a year. These windfarms are owned by Shell, Exon, and Mobil among others. The accountants get to write off capital invested in the wind turbines and cost of leasing the land. Farmers are quite happy to lease land for a wind turbine as it pays about $5000/yr. per turbine and doesn’t impact farming activities at all which is essentially how phone companies lease land for their cell towers. Same scheme.
If you don’t like the federal tax breaks talk to your congressmen. Those have nothing to do with Texas.
The electricity itself is sold on the open market and has to compete just like all the electrical providers. Current rates in Texas average $0.12/kwh which is 10% below the national average and lower than both California ($0.14/kwh) and New York ($0.19/kwh) which are the only comparably sized state economies.
Last, this was only the second rolling blackout in the past 20 years. The last was in 2006 caused by a heat wave. The author, Mike Smith, if he’d done just a tiny scrap of due diligence, would have learned that two power plants, one gas and one coal, went offline due to broken water pipes and natural gas pipeline pressure was low due to some transient pump problem which contributed to people turning on electric heaters when their gas furnaces didn’t have enough pressure. It was something of a perfect storm of failures coupled with the coldest arctic air mass to hit the state in a decade. It had jack-diddly-squat to do with wind turbines.
Ooops. That sentence “Spinning Reserve and interuptible loable ….” should read “Spinning Reserve and interuptible load ….”
It is becoming very obvious that politicians and civic authorities in the Western world have convinced themselves that continuous climate warming is a fact and are not taking the very high possibility of cold weather as a part of natural variation seriously.
The situation here in the UK is becoming increasingly worrying as said authorities have their heads stuck in ‘warm’ mode and policy has not taken cognisance of reality. This winter and the previous two winters have been cold enough to disrupt transport systems of every kind in quite major ways and at a major cost to the nation. It has also directly caused an increase in the incidence of the elderly dying of the cold through their inability to fund the costs of their basic heating needs; The huge recent rise in the price of heating oil has led to a sharp rise in the number of thefts of this commoditiy from household tanks in the countryside, which has left some elderly citizens in dire circumstances. The cavalier attitude of the politicians to the deaths is disgraceful, and their response is even more disgraceful – they promise to spend even more on expensive wind farms which cannot produce energy when the wind is insuficient to drive them during periods of very low temperature. The United Kingdom’s politicians have convinced themselves of a vicious fable and the citizenry will pay the price in high costs, death and misery.
I am convinced, after a quick look at the facts coming in from Texas, that windmills can not provide rational answers to their energy problems.
@tty
I am very much aware of that fact, which is also why I stress the necessity of an interREGIONAL, modern and flexible power grid. That allows Denmark to buy, for example, nuclear generated power from Germany and Sweden when wind&hydro are low, while we sell our excess power production to these same nations at market-competetive prices when the wind is blowing nicely and supply exceeds demand.
Make no mistake, even in Northern Europe the energy market&infrastructure is no-where near a level of maturity that would allow a full-scale shift to renewables. However, in our and other regions the relevant energy technologies are quite mature enough to allow for intermittent renewables to make up a decent percentage of total power generation, and to compete on even terms with e.g. fossil fuels on the energy markets. The technologies would not have matured to this level without the heavy subsidies of previous decades, though, and we are still in a somewhat transitional state:)
Kum,
What’s your day job ?…..i’m betting it’s not in engineering because all you’re giving us is (politician’s and media) rhetoric.
Jimmy
The wind power industry has yet to design a system that can work in all weathers, ice will shut down a windmill or destroy it, ice building up on the blades and throwing off on one will kill anything within radius, destroy bearings etc,. the heating systems (as of those in Texas ) were not designed for sub zero temp. (remember we got into this mess because of global warming ) sudden wind change, high winds, extra high temp. all shut down the turbine .
This is an unfortunate article, as it appears to rely heavily upon guesswork. It’s all very well coming back later and offering “What I meant to say was…”, but the nature of the raging debate on this issue means weakness of this kind undermines the credibility of the source, in this case, the author. I don’t doubt the extensive research behind the book, but a stab in the dark aids no cause.
Anon says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:44 pm
It doesn’t help to say something that isn’t true. The state of Texas does not invest money in electrical generating plants. These are privately owned and operated and must compete with each other on the open market. Texas average electricity rates are 10% below the national average. If nuclear power plants could profitably compete with other suppliers then they would get built and if they can’t compete they won’t get built – it’s just that simple. The market is open, generating plants are privately owned and operated, and if there is profit potential there will be investment capital to build them.
There’s something about windmills having heating systems installed to enable them to continue functioning in extreme cold, even with wind blowing internal gubbins can seize up.
Imagine what will happen to demand as more and more people buy electric cars.
“Austin wasn’t even affected by the recent winter storm”
Bullshite. I live in Austin. We had 60mph straight line winds when the cold front arrived and temperatures plunged to 16F. That’s the lowest temperature I’ve ever seen in Austin and I’ve lived there 18 years. I have two homes, one is heated by gas and the other by electricity. You bet your ass Austin was effected as my electric furnace and many others worked overtime in that low temperature.
Kristoffer Haldrup says:
February 2, 2011 at 10:36 pm
“Coming from a country, Denmark, where 20%+ of the generating capacity is based on windmills and where blackouts are Exceptionally rare, this and related “wind power” posts were a hoot to read and quite in line with my impression of the author&readership of WUWT in general, exceptions noted:)
-The trick to providing a stable energy supply based to a large extent on intermittent renewables (or failing coal plants, for that matter…)? An inter-regional, modern electricity grid, which is what the US most certainly does not have in most regions.”
Yes it helps to have French Nukes and Norwegian and Swedish hydro connected to your grid and to pay other countries to take your useless wind power when they don’t really want it.
Smug Danish git.
A point of detail – as far as I know, the UK has not so far suffered ‘rolling blackouts’ because the wind did not blow.
However, the crazy UK energy policy now in place means that regular blackouts are now almost inevitable before the end of the present decade, unless the decision to close down several coal-fired power stations is reversed, and amazing progress is made in building new fossil fuel generating capacity.
Friends:
I write in hope of providing some clarity to this debate.
Several here seem unaware of the difference between
(a) total electricity supply available
and
(b) available total electricity supply.
I write to explain why the difference makes Mike Smith’s article correct in that the use of windfarms caused the Texas ‘brownouts’ when two thermal power stations went off-line.
Power stations operate spinning standby to match electricity demand to supply. In addition to this, other power stations operate spinning standby to manage risk of supply failures. There is a risk of failure of a base load power station or the transmission system from it. Such failures would cause power cuts in the absence of the additional spinning standby.
Windfarms provide intermittent power. Hence, windfarms increase the risk of supply failures. Indeed, they give the certainty of supply failures when the wind is too strong or not strong enough.
The increased risk of supply failures from windfarms is insignificant when there is small contribution of electricity to the grid from windfarms. All the output from the windfarms forces thermal power stations to operate spinning standby or at reduced output that can cope with the risk.
But the problem of managing the risk increases disproportionately as the risk increases.
Electricity is not wanted in the same amounts everywhere, and electricity is lost when it is transmitted over long distances. The additional risk management difficulties require additional spinning standby when the risk of supply failures is very large. Otherwise it would be impossible to match supply with demand throughout the grid when a large supply failure occurred. Indeed, the Texas failures occurred when a large supply failure coincided with little output from wind turbines. This could only have been avoided by construction – and operation on continuous spinning standby – of additional power stations to match the maximum output of the wind turbines.
So, additional power stations must be built and operated on spinning standby (using their additional fuel and providing their additional emissions) to manage the increased risk of power cuts from supply failures when windpower contributes more than 20% of the potential electricity supply. Indeed, this limit is the reason why the UK target for ‘renewable’ electricity generation is 20%: the UK generates hydropower (mostly in Scotland) so wind power will not reach the 20% limit if the target is met.
But the problem was first realised in California although California uses much less wind power than 20% of its grid supply. Some 13,000 wind turbines produce more than one percent of California’s electricity. (This is about half as much electricity as is produced by one nuclear power plant.) The windfarms were constructed instead of thermal power stations (or instead of re-opening mothballed Californian nuclear power stations), and excess capacity in adjacent States was used to overcome the need for the windfarms to have backup. But California obtained a power crisis when that excess capacity was consumed by the adjacent States. Hence, California has inadequate spare capacity for the needed additional risk management associated with its small use of wind power. This resulted in California needing to continuously apply scheduled voltage reductions (known as ‘brown outs’) around the State as an alternative method to manage the risk of power cuts from supply failures.
Texas has increased its use of windpower to the degree that, as Mike Smith reports, it has also had to resort to using ‘brownouts’ at times of unscheduled power outages.
Richard
Regarding “Kristoffer Haldrup says:
February 2, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Coming from a country, Denmark, where 20%+ of the generating capacity is based on windmills and where blackouts are Exceptionally rare, this and related “wind power” posts were a hoot to read and quite in line with my impression of the author&readership of WUWT in general, exceptions noted:)”
Kristoffer, it is never a good idea to throw out blanket insults, however I find a little research on your claims of Danish sucess like accuracy and truth.
Especially controversial are the subsidies made to Danish wind power and problems connected with grid management. It’s pretty universally accepted among wind specialists that keeping the transmission system running smoothly gets tougher as wind power’s share grows.
In 1998, Norway commissioned a study of wind power in Denmark and concluded that it has “serious environmental effects, insufficient production, and high production costs.”
Denmark (population 5.3 million) has over 6,000 turbines that produced electricity equal to 19% of what the country used in 2002. Yet no conventional power plant has been shut down. Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity. Most cannot simply be turned on and off as the wind dies and rises, and the quick ramping up and down of those that can be would actually increase their output of pollution and carbon dioxide (the primary “greenhouse” gas). So when the wind is blowing just right for the turbines, the power they generate is usually a surplus and sold to other countries at an extremely discounted price, or the turbines are simply shut off.
A writer in The Utilities Journal (David J. White, “Danish Wind: Too Good To Be True?,” July 2004) found that 84% of western Denmark’s wind-generated electricity was exported (at a revenue loss) in 2003, i.e., Denmark’s glut of wind towers provided only 3.3% of the nation’s electricity. According to The Wall Street Journal Europe, the Copenhagen newspaper Politiken reported that wind actually met only 1.7% of Denmark’s total demand in 1999. (Besides the amount exported, this low figure may also reflect the actual net contribution. The large amount of electricity used by the turbines themselves is typically not accounted for in the usually cited output figures. Click here for information about electricity use in wind turbines.) In Weekendavisen (Nov. 4, 2005), Frede Vestergaard reported that Denmark as a whole exported 70.3% of its wind production in 2004.
Denmark is just dependent enough on wind power that when the wind is not blowing right they must import electricity. In 2000 they imported more electricity than they exported. And added to the Danish electric bill are the subsidies that support the private companies building the wind towers. Danish electricity costs for the consumer are the highest in Europe. [Click here for a detailed and well referenced examination by Vic Mason.] http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wind-power-in-denmark/