Guest Fake News analysis by David Middleton
The USA Today version of this non-story was even dumber than CNN’s version…
Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time
By Ryan Prior, CNN
Updated 6:24 PM ET, Thu July 25, 2019(CNN) Wind power has surpassed coal for the first time in Texas, according to a new report.
The numbers cap an enormous rise in wind power in the nation’s top energy-producing state over the past decades.
Wind has generated 22% of the state’s electrical needs this year. It just edged out coal, which provided 21% of the Lone Star State’s power, according to the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, which manages electrical flow on about 90% of the Texan grid.
[…]
Yet while wind has soared and coal-generated power has cooled, natural gas still accounts for the largest share of the state’s energy mix, generating 46% of its power in 2003 and staying strong at 44% last year.
[…]
New Jersey’s largest and oldest power company, PSEG, announced Thursday that it’s pledging to go carbon-free by 2050.
“We believe climate change is real. There is this crescendo that’s building,” CEO Ralph Izzo told CNN Business.
Darth Vader: This is CNN
Almost all of these energy “journalists” show up on LinkedIn as 3rd Connections… Young Ryan is the first to show up as 2nd Connection. This means he’s connected to at least one person connected to me… Scary. Ryan has a 2012 BA in English and International Affairs from the Univesrity of Georgia.
The ERCOT report didn’t mention anything about wind topping coal and certainly didn’t refer to CNN’s fake news from yesterday about PSEG. It’s an Excel spreadsheet ERCOT periodically issues. From January through June, 2019, wind power generated 21.8% of ERCOT’s electricity and coal generated 21.4%.
Clearly these intrepid energy “journalists” were capable of doing just enough math to get to their breathless headlines… But, “you can’t fix stupid.”
Wind topped coal for the Jan-Jun period entirely due to the fact that April was very windy, as it usually is.
Wind works fairly well in Texas for exactly one reason: Physical geography.
There’s just one slight problem here: Wind is seasonal.
No matter how many unicorn wishes are made, wind will probably not beat coal in Texas over the rest of the year. I downloaded EROT’s 2018 Demand and Energy Report. Here’s a comparison of wind generation in 2018 vs 2019.
Coal averaged just over 6,300 MWh/month from January through June and coal output actually climbs when “the winds don’t blow”…
Young Ryan earns a Bob Uecker “Just a bit outside” award for his intrepid reporting…
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Has CNN no shame . What happened ?
It must be climate change . As the earth heats CNN ratings fall .
The little-reported aspect of operating a power ‘grid’ system is the Operations Message “log” showing events such as generator trips, system power-reserve margin shortfalls, etc. which can occur throughout the day.
Below is an excerpt from the Texas “ERCOT” (Texas’ electric system coordinator) Operations Message log showing some events which occurred the last few hot days here in late July showing where operating reserves began to run short in the afternoons when electric power demand ramps up here in Texas due to temps at and above ~95 degrees, and sometimes owing to generator trips –OR– shortages in wind output (wind data not shown here; that is available via other sources).
Without further adieu here are key events the last few days (I also wanted to ‘park’ these parsed events somewhere for later access):
—————-
Jul 30 2019 17:45:21 CST ERCOT has cancelled the following notice: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Cancelled
Jul 30 2019 13:42:33 CST Physical Responsive Capability < 3000 MW: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Active
Jul 30 2019 00:07:14 CST On 07/29/2019, a sudden loss of generation occurred at 17:59 totaling 817.34 MW. Frequency declined to 59.834 Hz, ERCOT load was 64,958 MW. Operational Information Active
—————-
Jul 29 2019 18:05:07 CST ERCOT Responsive Reserve Has Been Recalled Operational Information Cancelled
Jul 29 2019 17:59:19 CST ERCOT Responsive Reserve Has Been Deployed Operational Information Active
—————-
Jul 28 2019 19:15:38 CST ERCOT has cancelled the following notice: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Cancelled
Jul 28 2019 16:46:09 CST Physical Responsive Capability < 3000 MW: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Active
—————-
Jul 27 2019 17:59:07 CST ERCOT has cancelled the following notice: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Cancelled
Jul 27 2019 15:56:10 CST Physical Responsive Capability < 3000 MW: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Active
—————–
Jul 26 2019 17:16:12 CST ERCOT has cancelled the following notice: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Cancelled
Jul 26 2019 15:37:39 CST Physical Responsive Capability < 3000 MW: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Active
—————–
Jul 26 2019 08:46:09 CST The Daily RSASM for Friday, July 26, 2019 will not be occurring due to zero participating QSEs. Operational Information Active
Jul 26 2019 00:20:43 CST No sudden loss of generation greater than 450 MW occurred on July 25, 2019 Operational Information Active
—————–
Jul 25 2019 17:18:44 CST ERCOT has cancelled the following notice: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Cancelled
Jul 25 2019 15:03:30 CST Physical Responsive Capability < 3000 MW: ERCOT is issuing an Advisory due to Physical Responsive Capability being below 3000 MW Advisory Active
—————–
Jul 24 2019 00:48:06 CST On 07/23/19, a sudden loss of generation occurred at 09:10 totaling 621 MW. Frequency declined to 59.887 Hz, ERCOT load was 46, 735 MW. Another sudden loss of generation occurred at 13 48 totaling 469 MW. Frequency declined to 59.910 Hz, ERCOT load was 57, 249 MW. Operational Information Active
—————–
Jul 23 2019 09:15:02 CST ERCOT Responsive Reserve Has Been Recalled Operational Information Cancelled
Jul 23 2019 09:11:02 CST ERCOT Responsive Reserve Has Been Deployed Operational Information Active
Jul 23 2019 08:47:35 CST The Daily RSASM for Tuesday July 23, 2019 will not be occurring due to zero participating QSEs. Operational Information Active
Jul 23 2019 04:24:47 CST On 07/22/2019, a sudden loss of generation occurred at 10:35 totaling 737 MW. Frequency declined to 59.877Hz, ERCOT load was 55, 002 MW. Operational Information Active
—————–
The webpage from which these were extracted: http://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/opsmessages
.