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
This article is unadulterated fear mongering. As well as including made up nonsense about wind power failing, when what actually happened was “One coal-powered plant had a frozen pile of coal and another had frozen pipes”, it also says:-
“Of course, Great Britain has experienced wind power failures (and rolling blackouts) during cold weather due to light winds.”
This is not true. There have not been rolling blackouts in the UK because it is not windy. The linked article, written by a breathless journalist trying to shift newspapers, says what might happen in the future.
So Kristoff, your Danish electric costs, just like electric costs in Texas, are a large drain on your economy. Wind power is a failure without large tax support and it is not clean or enviromentaly friendly.
“Mike Borgelt says:
February 3, 2011 at 1:41 am
Smug Danish git.”
The Danes are not the only ones.
When some years ago there was a power failure in the NE-USA, people in Swiss newspapers were mouthing off about US incompetence. Then there was a power failure in northern Italy because a tree fell onto an important transmission line in Switzerland, and “ruck-zuck-zack-zack” the above discussion disappeared from the blogs.
Kum
Kum Dollison,
You really should read this before you defend wind. Your insistence on “facts” supporting wind is unfortunately hot air. http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/mason-windpowerindenmark-2008.pdf
When most needed it gives up the ghost. That is unreliable power of the worst kind.
Will governments learn? No they will install more turbines thinking that some will work some of the time.
Oh for the reliability of coal, oil and nuclear!
I can confirm the the effects of power cuts and grid overloads due to wind power.
Where I live in Germany, the biggest test center of wind mill technology in Germany according to this web site: http://www.energystate.de/content2.php?lang=en&id=&subid=12
an ever growing number of wind mills is out of order due to technical problems with the gear boxes (20 to 30%)
First you see a brown colored oil slick covering the under site of the generator dome which grows slowly due to increased oil loss. These mills obviously don’t carry a sensor that shuts the wind mill down before any damage due to oil losses occurs. A few days later the wind mill is down and often it takes weeks before repair crews show up. They must be very busy or it must take that long for parts to arrive. Mind you these are practically new wind mills, not older than 3-5 years.
There are also these moments when the odd wind mill is constantly shifting it’s rotor head to pick up the wind but fails to do so for many hours on a role.
This must be due to electronics or sensor problems responsible for keeping the rotor into the wind. The wind mills are also completely down for days on record (10 days on row is no exception) when a high pressure are takes a hold of the region and the wind lies down. These are hot or cold periods when electric power is needed the most. Maintenance obviously is a constant requirement to keep them running and I am really having problems to accept wind power as a reliable source for electricity from what I observe here.
Besides that, since the wind mills are operational and connected to the grid we have experienced a hike in power cuts from once in five years to 6 times a year and also power spikes, a real killer for electronics and electric equipment from fridges to washing machines.
I have lost the content of the fridge several times and can no longer leave it unattended when I travel for a few weeks which simply is an annoying inconvenience.
The same goes for the phone, fax and computer server network that is in need of a manual reboot when the power comes back to the grid after a power cut.
Very, very annoying.
I really don’t understand the Government policies in Europe to push for this I.M.O. failed technology pushing the reliability of our grid to the level of a third world country.
When the power went out here in Houston, the only light I had was my computer monitor, and the only music was the beeping of my UPS. So I went to bed. With an extra comforter, since the furnace wasn’t running and it was below freezing outside.
A glimpse of the future unless we make some changes in D.C.
The transistor radio said the problem was the natural gas pressure was way down because of the cold, and some pipes burst at a couple of the coal fired plants. Give me nukes.
I know of two CCGT stations in the UK that were unable to run during the cold spells in December, due to freezing of instrumentation.
At this time, the wind turbines I also monitor were stationary for the vast majority of this period.
The sooner the UK wakes up to the winters to come, and stops toeing the CAGW line the better.
John Marshall says:
February 3, 2011 at 2:42 am
When most needed it gives up the ghost. That is unreliable power of the worst kind.
Will governments learn? No they will install more turbines thinking that some will work some of the time.
Oh for the reliability of coal, oil and nuclear!
———————————
It was the coal and gas that failed, not the wind farms:
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/02/02/whats-behind-the-blackouts-power-plants-not-designed-for-cold-weather/
When will governements learn not to invest in coal and gas?!?!
😉
Galvanize says:
February 3, 2011 at 3:22 am
I know of two CCGT stations in the UK that were unable to run during the cold spells in December, due to freezing of instrumentation.
At this time, the wind turbines I also monitor were stationary for the vast majority of this period.
The sooner the UK wakes up to the winters to come, and stops toeing the CAGW line the better.
———————
The only real alternative is nuclear, but people protest when you suggest bulding a nuclear power plant in their back garden.
@April E. Coggins who sai”:
One report mentioned that quite a few power plants were off line for periodic maintenance. The suggestion was that normal winters need less power than normal summers and there was less available to begin with. A total of 50 power plants were affected by the cold weather, including one brand new coal-fired plant, because they “failed to take proper precautions.”
The cold front was accompanied by several days of unusually high winds. If the windmills suffered, it wasn’t for lack of wind.
Well, I am living in Navarre, the first in Europe to be self-sufficient in renewable energy, (or so they say) and I cannot remember when was the last time we had a blackout at home.
From
Navarre, Europe’s sixth largest producer of wind power, currently sustains approximately 70 percent of its electricity needs from renewable energy sources, wind farms being used most extensively, and has a 900-megawatt capacity of installed wind power.
(for a population of 500.000 people, I must say)
So, 70 % of our electricity comes from renewable energy sources, mostly wind power, and yet, no blackouts. The blackout problems other places have may have other causes and can be prevented with better management.
And, by the way, we are the world largest producers of VolksWagen Polo cars, or we were last time I checked.
Thanks mods for fixing my link. 🙂
[De nada. ~dbs]
guys, just because you want it to be true does not make it true, this article is just dead wrong about, well, everything, and Mike Smith shows a true lack of understanding in his comments.
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again. Once we get rid of all this CAGW madness we should start on getting rid of political bloody correctness.
@Mike
Yes, as I write, wind is by no means an effective energy solution on its own, we agree perfectly on that. But it is demonstrably effective as part of the cocktail, nevertheless, and I would not call it “useless” in any sense of the word…but then, nor would I resort to name calling 😉
@David
Thanks for thoughtful comments, which again serve to underscore that it there is not any cause to say that wind power alone is The next Big Thing, but nor is there any reason at all not to consider it as part of our future energy supply. In this context, the subsidies have been necessary to develop the technology to its present level and beyond, a development that would not have taken place had only “market forces” been allowed to determine the future of this particular technology 25 years ago. Incidentally, the high Danish electricity costs are only to a small extent due to wind in the mix, but rather to some pretty fierce taxation/VAT issues. -The really heavy energy users in the industrial sector are exempt from many of these, in order not to hamper their competitiveness on an international level. This makes it less of a drain on the economy, and basically just one more tax:)
If you are right, then why didn’t Europe have roliing blackouts when they had the same issue and weather last month? They have a much higher penetration of wind…
Your whole premise seems more based on hope than knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
Lets hope all those freezing windmills have effective de-icing strategies…
Brad says at February 3, 2011 at 4:09 am :
“guys, just because you want it to be true does not make it true, this article is just dead wrong about, well, everything, and Mike Smith shows a true lack of understanding in his comments.”
Spoken like a true believer. Evidence-free, opinion total, and denial absolute.
Richard
Falling shards of ice pose an obvious risk to people, buildings and vehicles if the turbines are close to habitations or roads. In the UK several instances of this kind were reported last winter, the ice sometimes landing on homes and in gardens in chunks of up to 2ft. Residents were wary of venturing out until the turbines were switched off.
http://social.windenergyupdate.com/industry-insight/blade-ice-detection-and-removal-technology-accelerates-europe
Green energy:
Funded by carbon tax, paid to banks-world bank/IMF.
World bank lends money for investment in green technology.
Developing country borrows huge sums of money, pays green tech industry owned by banks and energy companies, builds green plants.
Green plants so innefficient that they consume more net energy than fossile plant in manufacturing and maintanence.
Developing country fails to pay mortage of huge loan.
World bank writes off loans, in return developing country surrenders plants and natural rescources to banks and energy companies.
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Have we seen this before?
This is why Copenhagen failed, dev. countries are getting wise to the scheme.
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Oh, did I mention the new market of trading nothing, ie carbon offsets?
A percent or so in courtage of trillions of dollars worth of emperors clothes makes for huge profits.
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It is a scam, it is enron all over, Madoff, federal reserve this is outrageous.
Urederra says:
February 3, 2011 at 3:53 am
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/mason-windpowerindenmark-2008.pdf
You really need to actually read this link, your renewable and wind power in all probability has issues similar to Denmark, which only works due to the very flexible hydro from Norway and Nuclear and coal back up (hydro and nuclear are not an option in most places, heavy taxes as Kristoffer Haldrup almost admits to, BTW Kristoffer, where I come from we call that a misallocation of resources) Wind is NOT a clean, cheap, or efficient option even in the best of circumstances like Denmark where the high cost IS due to the extensive wind production and the VAT tax is necessary to pay for it.
Brad this article was unfortunately poorly done, as the cause of the issue in Texas was not researched. However the message in the article and most comments are about the overall issue of wind power. Texas does have those problems and if the resources had instead gone into clean coal or third and fourth generation nuclear along with a policy to support it and make it less expensive (easily doable) this would not have been an issue.
>”combined with generation that’s been compromised and is producing less than expected”
WRONGO! If Texas had half a brain they would have completely expected this to happen, in fact its’ guaranteed.
Look at that, this mornig, before sunrise, every area of Texas has wind speeds above the 6.7mph generation requirement for the Misubishi 1000A turbines at the largest wind farm in the world (west of Dallas).
http://www.usairnet.com/weather/maps/current/texas/wind-speed/
Richard-
Please take the time to read the rest of my posts, evidence filled and actually correct. Nothing like knowledge.
Also, nat gas gen is the method of choice for peaking neeeds like Texas had – blame the infrastructure and planning where the blame belongs.
Show me where the wind was too low to generate, it was not, shopw me where anyone in power and with knowledge blamed wind – they did not because this is simply wrong.