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.
 |
| 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.
 |
| 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?
===============================================================
Also FYI – Texas wind power induced blackouts happened in 2008, see this story.
See Mike Smith’s book on “how science tamed the weather”.
===============================================================
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
“FYI – Texas wind power induced blackouts happened in 2008, see this story.”
That’s a lie. It was not a blackout. The story explicitely states that only industrial users who had purchased interruptable electricity had delivery curtailed for 90 minutes.
An interruptable supply means just that. These industries enjoy a lower price for electricity in return for being the first ones to have power cut when demand exceeds supply. It works the same way for water during droughts – certain customers have interruptable water so that in a drought situation they are the first to have their water supply reduced and in return they purchase water at a reduced price the rest of the time. Once more Mike Smith demonstrates he doesn’t have the first clue of what he is talking about.
dp says:
February 3, 2011 at 10:30 pm
“Feel free to check my work – this is my best understanding of uncontrolled inputs on a grid that requires steady power on demand.”
Thanks. I checked your work and found that electricity in Texas costs an average of $0.12/kwh which is 10% below the national average. Average price in California is $0.14/kwh and in New York it is $0.19/kwh. California and New York are the only other states with similar size populations to serve.
Texas is doing an exemplary job of generating electricity and managing its grid. California and New York would be well served to use Texas as an example of how to do better.
In 2006, the only study I could find, which I already linked in a previous comment, Texas spent a total of less than 2 million dollars in “subsidies” for wind turbines which is predominantly in the form of school tax abatements. That’s chicken feed in a state with 20 million people.
The number is so low because most of the wind farms are on land that is already tax abated via agricultural exemptions.
The big subsidies are federal tax incentives. Companies like Shell and Exon are the typical owners of these windfarms and are the beneficiaries of federal tax incentives. Federal tax benefits in 2006 for Texas wind farms were five hundred million dollars.
Farmers are also big winners. They typically receive a lease payment of $5000/yr per wind turbine erected on their land. That’s about twice as much as they get for a cell phone tower. The wind turbine does not significantly effect their farming activity so this is gravy for them. Farms are struggling as it is with variations in weather causing alternating years of feast and famine. Having a wind turbine or cell phone tower on their land provides them with a steady income stream uneffected by good or bad growing seasons.
If one wants to find the facts on subsidies (actually learning the truth seems to be a low priority for most commenters in this thread) you can find it here:
http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/energy/subsidies/
FYI, for those who can’t be bothered to put in some due diligence in learning the facts, or for those who don’t want the facts get in the way of their hatred of alternative energy production, ethanol subsidies dwarf everything else. If you want to harp on wasteful, harmful subsidies then at least go after the worst one by far – ethanol distilled from corn.
It is the norm nowadays to pay ten times as much for something inferior which would only solve a tiny fraction of the problem even if you believed in the problem. Belief in electric cars and windmills to solve global warming has to be a badge of economic incompetence. Even if used to absurd limits they would be a rounding error on consumption – if they significantly reduce emissions it is only through crippling the economy. The fact that every political party supports it makes you wonder whether this kind of waste and inefficiency is the norm for the public sector.
Brian H says:
February 3, 2011 at 10:05 pm
Mike and Anthony,
I think the time has come and passed for you to issue a retraction. Even the blog MasterResource, usually a hub of misinformation about wind energy, has directly labeled as “false” your rumors that wind had anything to do with causing the blackouts:
“A few rumors bounced around the radio waves and internet forums on Wednesday linking the rolling blackouts to ERCOT’s wind capacity, one rumor even claiming that wind power had dropped to zero. The rumors were false. News reports indicate that some wind turbines were out of service due to the cold, but the problems appeared not to be widespread. ERCOT spokesperson Dottie Roark said that wind power plants from between 3,500 to 4,000 MW of power during the worst parts of the emergency, about normal for this time of year.”
http://www.masterresource.org/2011/02/texas-winter-power-outages-ercot/
It appears that the Texas problem was not the same as the problems in England last month. Here in south central Texas we had plenty of wind during this unusual cold spell (Which I thought was unusual. We usually have windy conditions for a few hours after a cold front, But the wind didn’t die down until late Thursday afternoon.) The wind field plots on the local TV weather showed a good wind field thoughtout the state.
I am not a big fan of wind power, but we can’t blame the rolling blackouts on wind power. The San Antonio, Tx, newspapers website had this to say:
“Statewide, about 50 generating units, representing about 7,000 megawatts that ERCOT had been counting on either tripped offline or were unable to come online, Doggett said. That’s almost 10 percent of the grid’s available capacity.
He blamed those downed units, not excess demand, as the reason behind the power shortage that forced it to call for rolling outages.
ERCOT lifted the emergency status for utilities across the state late Thursday morning, although Doggett said South Texas remained vulnerable.
“We continue to have plant outages in the Valley that concern us,” he said.
The downed plants reported a variety of weather-related problems, like frozen pipes and valves and frozen control equipment. He said grid operators saw no particular pattern, either in location or reason for failure.”
This entire original post was based on an apparent vendetta against the wind industry and a self-admitted guess that turned out to be completely inaccurate.
How about you just retract it and we can all move on?
Dave, sorry, but you are wrong. See this Reuters post:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/02/28/us-utilities-ercot-wind-idUSN2749522920080228
And Reuters is not known as a “skeptics heaven”.
Piotr
Dave Springer.
Wind in a way is “free riding” on the grid; wind is paid as if it is reliable, when in fact it isn’t, and then the other electricity providers de-facto subsidize wind (again, they already receive Federal and State subsidies) This is true in Texas.
Coal, nuclear and gas operators must pay for their own backup if an operational or maintenance problem prevents them from delivering power as promised. But if wind generators fail to deliver promised power because the wind doesn’t blow, the cost of backing up wind power companies is spread among all the generators, state officials say. This puts an unfair burden on non=wind generators, says the gas faction.
So the larger the percentage of a variable source of power (wind) which cannot be controlled is, the greater the cost of all power production is, yet this is not reflected in the true cost of wind energy. In a statist system all animals are equal, but some are more equal then others.
So Dave Springer
What was the total cost of building and operating all wind generation in Texas.
Include all Federal and State subsidies, including any initial tax credits in the building.
Include the necessary increase in price of non-wind generation paid by non wind generators for Wind powers intermittent problems.
Include a portion of the capital cost of construction of non wind generation facilities with the cost of wind. This is never included but should be. Imagine you are starting power production from scratch. Wind alone could never be done, but Nuclear for instance could. These capital costs should be included. Wind is riding on the grid and the non wind producers as well.
.
pjotrk:
The article you posted was from 2008. I was talking about this post. From Feb. 2, 2011. The one that we’re currently commenting on.
I will serve as the last nail in this coffin. I work for a power marketer on the ERCOT 24-hour desk of my company. The wind power was between 2967 MWs(HE2 on 2/3) and 3489 MWs (HE19 2/2) during the problem. The maximum ERCOT can get from the wind farms is 6500 MWs due to transmission constraints, even though much more has been built and is operational. These values are a matter of public info. If you need the actual data set showing this I think I can post without getting fired.
Here’s an article from a pro-coal publication. Written by a journalist. Who apparently asks questions and has the wherewithal to vet his sources and not rely on pointed conjecture.
http://www.powergenworldwide.com/index/display/articledisplay/2372081052/articles/powergenworldwide/t-and-d/t-and-d-infrastructure/2011/02/ERCOT-outage.html
Wind was not the cause. Not even a contributor. Time to give it up. Retract and move on.
Dave Springer, you are correct that essentially “ethanol subsidies dwarf everything else.” And I say that as one coming from a family heavily helped by ethanol subsidies. Also, my family has been heavily helped by wind subsidies.
Although the effort in the study you quote is laudable, it does not give a complete picture of the subsidies to wind in the nation.
1. Across this nation, there are places were windmills are exempt from property taxes. On the other hand, coal and nuclear plants pay the highest mil rate of all property classes. (Also, moving to the category of petroleum, there is a royalty payment to the government based on oil production – a tax not paid by other energy sources.)
2. Wind-generated contracts receive a sweetheart deals that utilities must pay. These sweetheart deals guarantee a market for wind-generated electricity at a price above market. This arrangement lowers the cost of capital for wind companies, and increases the cost of capital for utilities. This subsidy is typically not understood by non-financial people.
3. Wind-generated electricity requires a back –up. If we accept the earlier observation that ERCOT counts only 8% of wind’s nameplate capacity, then 92% of wind’s capacity must be duplicated. The study cited by Mr. Springer does not include this cost.
4. Typically the back-up capacity for wind is gas. This leads to an over reliance on gas as an energy source. You can see the result in this over-reliance when there was not enough gas in the pipeline to reach the gas generation stations in Texas. Wind is not guiltless when gas is unable to perform due to lack of gas. A more logical plan for capacity construction would have less gas and less wind and more coal. Yes, a couple of coal plants had problems during the system stress, but the total reliability of coal is more than the total reliability of gas and wind. Tom Gray and others seem to miss the point that dollars spent on wind are dollars not available to spend elsewhere.
5. Let us not forget the 1.5 cent per kwh that the federal government gives to wind generators. That 1.5 cent is more than the typical operating cost of a coal plant.
6. The list could go on, but I will draw this post to a close.
I am sorry. There is one more noteworthy point to add about wind subsidies not captured by the study mention by Mr. Springer. When power generation is added, transmission lines must be built to move the electricity to the distribution systems, and costs are assigned to generation sources for this transmission. Recently — at least in the Midwest Operating System — wind generators objected to being assigned any costs for transmission, even though transmission lines were being built for their electricity.
Bryan says:
February 4, 2011 at 9:58 am (Edit)
Wind was not the cause. Not even a contributor.
True. Wind was not even a contributor – at less than 30% of its installed capability, it didn’t contribute to much…..except for the hot air being issued about its contribution. 8<)
A few questions for Michael Goggin (yet to answer) ,
1) What is the capacity of Texas Wind?
2) How much was actually produced during the time in question?
3) How much did those turbines cost?
4) How many coal plants and what MW could have been available if the answer to #3 was spent on coal power plants?
Mark: “The wind power was between 2967 MWs(HE2 on 2/3) and 3489 MWs (HE19 2/2) during the problem. The maximum ERCOT can get from the wind farms is 6500 MWs”
So the wind was running at 50% capacity that ERCOT can handle.
But I heard that Wind capacity was 10,000MW so it was only running at 33%?
But … I thought it was windy. Are you saying Turbines only operate at 33% of actual rated capacity when its windy? What would have happened if it was calm as it was in the UK this winter?
Mark, you say,
“I will serve as the last nail in this coffin. I work for a power marketer on the ERCOT 24-hour desk of my company. The wind power was between 2967 MWs(HE2 on 2/3) and 3489 MWs (HE19 2/2) during the problem. The maximum ERCOT can get from the wind farms is 6500 MWs due to transmission constraints, even though much more has been built and is operational. These values are a matter of public info. If you need the actual data set showing this I think I can post without getting fired.”
How much wind power was generated in the State of Texas between 9pm Wednesday evening (2nd) and 7am Wednesday (3rd)?
Mike
Mark,
Can you also tell us the amount of wind power at 8pm Wednesday?
Mike
Mike, you made two statements in your post:
The article didn’t give a clue as to what generating capability failed, but I can make a pretty good guess: Wind energy.
Now, because of relying so much on wind power, the state is suffering blackouts.
Both statements are unsupportable. You were just plain wrong in both cases. The sidebar discussions following your post about subsidies, etc. do not advance your argument and are irrelevant to your OP.
When will you start railing about the the coal plants that weren’t prepared for cold weather? And ERCOT for allowing an unusual amount of baseload capacity to be off line for maintenance?
Mike, you may want to listen to the CEO of ERCOT:
“Texas Tribune: Were there problems with wind-power plants needing to be shut down for high winds or icing blades, and also did nuclear plants have any problems?
Doggett: I’m not aware of any nuclear plant problems, and I’m not aware of any specific issues with wind turbines having to shut down due to icing. I would highlight that we put out a special word of thanks to the wind community because they did contribute significantly through this timeframe. Wind was blowing, and we had often 3,500 megawatts of wind generation during that morning peak, which certainly helped us in this situation.”
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-energy/energy/an-interview-with-the-ceo-of-the-texas-grid/
Buried but not entirely lost in this argument–which some would evidently like to shut down by means of a retraction (because too many pertinent issues are being raised?)–are a few critical questions about wind energy, or any intermittent and non-dispatchable form of generation. I take the liberty of supplying what I believe to be the right answers:
1) Is it correct to believe we wouldn’t ever have installed enough wind capacity for any of this to matter in the slightest, were it not for the political potency of global warming campaigners? Yes.
2) Is it correct to believe the volume of greenhouse emissions to be avoided by installing wind capacity ranges somewhere between greatly oversold and nonexistent, owing to the need for equivalent fossil-fueled backup in spinning reserve? Yes.
3) Assume I’ve answered #2 incorrectly. If so, would it not remain true that meeting only a small percentage of electricity demand with wind generation would result in a correspondingly small (and therefore inconsequential) reduction of greenhouse emissions? Yes.
4) Given the grid instability that is anticipated to become a serious threat at a (likely fanciful) wind penetration of approximately 20 percent, may we assume meeting a small percentage of electricity demand with wind is as much as we can safely do? Evidently yes.
5) Then why on Earth do we fool with wind at all?
Those who feel a need to respond to rhetorical questions are invited to supply their own answers to #5.
Hi everyone,
Mike Goggin of the American Wind Energy Assn. is posting both here and at meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com because he has so far avoided the questions I am posing to him at my blog. Yesterday afternoon (5:21pm), he agreed to provide the wind energy data for Wednesday night (2nd) and Thursday morning (3rd). After now FIVE requests, he still hasn’t provided it. This is pertinent because, according to even the pro-wind people the PEAK load was Wednesday evening in Texas, not Wednesday morning! I want to see if wind can be a genuine contributor in extreme weather and load conditions.
I have stated, over and over, that if there was significant wind energy being generated during the time of the peak load I am open to revising my opinion. He keeps avoiding the issue.
There WERE reports of wind turbines doing down Wednesday morning during the blackout period, so my “guess” was correct: http://www.texastribune.org/texas-energy/electric-reliability-council-texas/the-rolling-chain-of-events-behind-texas-blackouts/
There are so many comments, here and at my blog, and so many emails I have personally received it is getting difficult to sort it all out. That said, let me try to reconstruct the “best case” for wind power. Even though there are 10,000MW installed, only 6,800 are possible at any given time due to transmission constraints. Mr. Goggin says that, at best, 3,900 were available from wind during the blackout period. If my math is correct, 39/68 = 57% availability, even though ERCOT had asked for maximum output.
If your car (which is about the physical size of the turbine itself) failed 43% of the time, I do not believe you would tout that fact as a “success.”
Finally, valid points about coal plants going offline, etc. If you will read my original post, that very issue IS acknowledged at the end. But here is the problem: Wind energy requires “spinning reserve” from conventional power plants because of its inconsistency. My contention is that if we had simply build more nuclear (or coal) plants with the money spent on wind, the crisis (which interrupted power to hospitals!) could have been avoided.
Again, please come over to my blog if you would like to follow this, although I’m going to shut this topic down soon as there is only so much time and space I’m willing to devote to it.
Mike
Goggin fails to provide these numbers from Tuesday night to Wednesday morning. The wind output decreased by 2585 MW from 3 pm Tuesday to 6 am Wednesday. That is about the same capacity lost as the two coal plants that tripped offline Wednesday morning. Roark is correct that they were generating 3630 MW at 6 am Wednesday, but that was down 41% from Tuesday. There is a history of this happening in ERCOT: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/43373.pdf