By Andy May
I live in Texas and write about climate science and energy, so I get a lot of questions about the recent problems. My wife and I are OK, we have a natural gas powered generator and did not lose power like most people did earlier this week. We also had a broken pipe, but it was outside the house, and I was eventually able to cap it, with the help of a neighbor, after the normal (for me) three trips to the hardware store and two failed attempts.
As usual these days, discussions of natural events quickly devolve into useless political arguments about who or what is to blame. Little thought is put into the technical or scientific issues, instead everything is viewed through the prism of Democrat or Republican political agendas. Ideology trumps common sense. Thus, we have Democrats blaming natural gas shortages and coal downtime and Republicans blaming the wind power collapse. What really happened?
The Chronology
Texas is a big place; it is 862 miles (1,387 km) wide and 23% larger in area than France. The weather varies a lot from Northwest Texas where the wind turbines are to Austin, San Antonio, and Houston where some of the worse problems were. So, let’s look at the data, in Figure 1 we see electricity generation from February 7 through Thursday February 18.
Monday night, February 8, West Texas was right at freezing, with spotty freezing rain and sleet and 100% humidity. See Figure 2.
Figure 2 shows some of the critical weather statistics for Midland, Texas, near the West Texas wind turbine country. What isn’t shown is the humidity. The sudden drop in temperature began Tuesday, Feb 8, and humidity quickly rose to 100%. No measurable precipitation occurred between February 8 and February 13, but condensation froze onto the wind turbine blades. The condensation generally concentrated on the leading edge of the blades, which direct the wind around the blade and produce the spin and the power. The ice on the blades, especially the ice on the leading edge, caused the blades to stop spinning.
As Elliot Hough, an engineer, put it:
“the turbine blades and more importantly, the leading edge that directs airflow around the blade to create lift, will cover with ice and eventually lose all lift. In the case of a turbine blade, that means the turbine stops turning. In the case of an airplane, the airplane falls to the ground. If air is well below freezing point, there is little to no moisture in the air and blades won’t freeze over. Such are the conditions much further north in North Dakota where temps can be sub-zero F and turbines don’t ice over.” Elliot Hough on Linkedin
When these conditions occur on airplanes about to take off, the wings are de-iced with a chemical that melts the ice and stays on the wings long enough for the plane to reach an altitude where the humidity is low enough that no ice will form. But wind turbines are on the ground and if the humidity stays very high, as it did in West Texas for three days, and the temperatures continue to drop, they fail.
As the wind turbines froze, natural gas combined cycle backup generators kicked in. These were all over the state. Natural gas generation is normally a very good backup. It is flexible and can increase or decrease its generation on demand, nearly instantly, unlike coal or nuclear. These latter two sources have lots of fuel on site and are normally safe from disruption, but they are slow to change their output. Thus, they are considered “base load” sources of power. Natural gas is very flexible, but since its fuel is delivered by pipeline, on demand, it is vulnerable to supply disruptions. The Texas weather was bad enough that even some nuclear and coal generation was affected on February 15th, the coldest day.
As Figure 1 shows, natural gas ramped up to make up the loss of wind, in fact it increased 450%, as shown in Figure 3 from the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 17.
So, the sequence of events was, wind turbines iced up from February 8 to 10 and their power output dropped 93%. Natural gas ramped up quickly to cover the shortfall, increasing an incredible 450%, but the pipelines feeding them fuel iced up, especially the valves on the pipelines and put the natural gas generators out of commission. [Update: As Marc notes in the comments, this is an oversimplification of what happened. Also see this article in the San Angelo Live for more details.]
If the Texas grid generation mix had more coal and nuclear this problem with cold weather would have been much less. But coal and nuclear plants have been decommissioned to make room for more wind power. To make matters worse, some coal and nuclear plants had cold weather problems themselves.
Conclusions
The proximate cause for the Texas grid collapse was the very cold weather from February 9 to 17. The initial problem was that wind was producing over 25% of Texas’ power and it is intermittent. Knowing it was intermittent, ERCOT ramped up natural gas generation as an instantaneous backup for the wind, but they forgot that natural gas is supply-on-demand, and the pipelines are vulnerable to disasters, especially cold weather. Disaster power sources are coal and nuclear, they have fuel on site for days or weeks and do not require a pipeline or a backup.
Policy implications
Texas has encouraged the building of wind turbines. They do this, in concert with the U.S. government, through direct subsidies and by paying for wind generation, rather than paying for electricity purchased. This guarantee of revenue means generating companies do not have to consider market demand, they can build wind turbines endlessly with no risk. They can even pay others to take their power and then be reimbursed by the government with our tax dollars! Since 2006, federal and Texas subsidies to wind power, have totaled $80 billion, this foolishness is explained well on the stopthesethings website.
The wind power excess capacity has distorted the generation mix in Texas to a dangerous and unbalanced level. Natural gas, coal and nuclear generating companies have too little revenue to increase or fortify their plants, since wind can generate as much as it wants and is guaranteed revenue for the electricity it generates.
The subsidies and mandates must be stopped and our baseload (aka emergency) capacity increased and fortified. Coal and nuclear power generation must increase. It should be clear to everyone now that, while natural gas is a perfect minute-by-minute grid stabilizer, since it is an on-demand electricity generator, it is vulnerable to weather disruptions. Texas’ current emergency baseload capacity is too small and too vulnerable.
Politics has thoroughly corrupted climate science as I explain in my new book: Politics and Climate Science: A History. The thoroughly corrupt field of climate science politics is now corrupting the fields of engineering involved in power generation. This is dangerous, engineers must make engineering decisions, not politicians. Reliable electricity is essential to our prosperity and well-being, our various governments should not be purposely destabilizing our electrical grid with dumb renewable policies, they should be strengthening the grid to make Texas more resilient.
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I still find it endlessly entertaining that renewable advocates, who have been telling us forever that wind and solar are reliable (calling Griff) now state that renewables had no part in this disaster BECAUSE they are so unreliable.
Finally we agree on something.
What is readily apparent is that anyone who suggests spending $1 more on wind anywhere in the southern USA before the real power is made resilient, should be arrested.
Or beaten about the head with a frozen 2×4
Imagine the nerve of demanding politicians do what is right for their constituents not the politically expedient flavour of the day!
FACT CHECKING REUTERS
THE EVIDENCE…
“The only connections the Texas grid has to outside grids are ties to the eastern power grid and the power grid in Mexico. ”
https://www.wusa9.com/mobile/article/news/verify/texas-independent-power-grid/507-6192cf48-4bf4-4a82-8586-0e5c0a549707
I rest my case.
This trick running lines into another country was used by Texas to skirt certain mandates brought by deregulation rules in the late 90’s. Claiming isolation. Pat Wood of the Texas PUC also brought that trick to a northern Maine utility, that claimed isolation from NEPOOL. But.. their lines ran from Maine into New Brunswick and back into Maine where it WAS CONNECTED to NEPOOL.
ERCOT rolled the dice and it came up snake eyes. They chose not to winter-proof those resources of which they manage (pipelines, valves, plain old “let’s get ready for winter”) and most of Texas got eff’ed. This conscious choice to not weather-proof got them through the last decade but Feb-2021 had other plans. The trouble is people died and further tens of thousands were harmed – notwithstanding the water pipe bursting devastation to homes, apartments, businesses, hospitals etc. Yet not one person will be held accountable and years of litigation will achieve nothing but college funds for lawyers with kids.
In the cold north there are additives so the gas does not freeze up.
No
We just dehydrate the gas more before it enters the system
The 3 blade turbines are planned obsolescence by GE and Siemens. The entire plan was for these to fail “so everyone will be clambering to get back to that good ole GE and Siemens central power company power”. The plan is coming off exactly as planned. There is a real solution that has been hidden even by the Wattsupwiththat web page which is more than complicit with the GE Siemens plan to send you charging back to central power company power. The patented prize winning JMCC WING Generator does not freeze up and works at all wind speeds in all weather conditions. GE and Siemens have forced all other companies out of business and are responsible for the subsidy kickbacks. Buffet laughs about it. He made billions on subsidies and openly states that the only reason anyone would invest in these pieces of crap is for the subsidies. GE and Siemens are on the boards of AWEA CWEA and other “wind energy” boards to influence governments to kick into a business that could not make any money BECAUSE THEIR PRODUCTS DO NOT WORK. Public efforts to stop their installation is banned from the owned media. People like Bill Gates and others are heavily invested in big energy so do not want real solutions. GE and Siemens core business is central power companies. They market 3 blade wind turbines also and have destroyed a business … wind power … that IS a viable solution. The JMCC WING Generators are the solution but you will never hear about them since they do work. See the web page https://www.jmccanneyscience.com/JMCCWingGenFarm%26RanchSubPage.htm
Not this scam again.
Isn’t it amazing how “inventors”, who can’t find investors, are always quick to claim conspiracies on the part of somebody.
If your designs were as good as you claim, investors would be clambering over each other to invest.
trolls never sleep
to MarkW troll … i never said anything about looking for funding … why are you trying to change the subject ???
I’ve a feeling these guys have access to data that would tell even more of the story than they reveal here:
https://www.yesenergy.com/yeblog/2021/generation-role-ercot-cold-snap
However, we do get some named plants that went off almost simultaneously. An inquiring journalist might ask them what caused their trips. I’d bet that for most it was frequency.
Backup Power
There were many coal gen plants shut down. Greenie Weeines lobby and EPA. EPA rules required massive upgrades or shut down. How many people have a backup car? Title,Insurance and depreciation?
So pressure to shutter coal means short term profit for utilities.
There were also NG pipeline stations which lost power. We moved into a new place years ago and lost electric. It had a gas fireplace which had an ignitor which was not 110 volt.
Most stories list 1 or 2 sources to blame. I see at last 10 factors.
Can you say if those generatoig units that remained operational were running at full capacity?
This just popped up on my Twitter feed. Apparently the DOE ordered them to only generate the extra power required to maintain grid integrity and were allowed to exceed emmissions only to the extent necessary for said integrity.
In other words, the DOE effectively throttled the power generators for the sake of clean air emissions.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2021/02/f82/DOE%20202%28c%29%20Emergency%20Order%20-%20ERCOT%2002.14.2021.pdf
Here’s a pretty good article on how windmills are operated in cold-weather environments:
https://www.vox.com/2021/2/19/22290512/texas-winter-storm-wind-energy-power-outage-grid-fox-news
It says right at the end of the article:
“Texans should know wind itself isn’t the problem; it’s a question of how much insurance state leaders are willing to purchase to prevent another disaster of this magnitude.”
end excerpt
Actually, wind IS the problem. It is unreliable, even if it is cold-weather hardened. Some kinds of cold weather can stop even cold-weather hardened windmills. Get enough ice on them and they are going to stop.
And there is no doubt there are times when the wind does not blow no matter what the temperature is at the time.
So there are always going to be times when windmills will not be able to operate.
For a State to prevent blackouts it must be able to supply 100 percent of its electrical demand from reliable sources such as coal, natural gas and nuclear. Supplying any part of base load electricity using windmills is just too big of a gamble. You’ll end up like Texas if you are not careful and it will hit you out of the blue.
Taking the Texas situation as it stands, I think there are some clear objectives that policy makers must follow to reduce the risk of repetition. Money should be spent wisely.
I’m sure I’ve missed some, but one obvious thing is that no credible amount of battery storage would have had any impact on the crisis
Not too long ago compressor stations were powered by natural gas. Due to enviro-whackos, they are now electric. This set up the cascade down when the grid frequency dropped.
On the nuke, I’d like to know if it going offline was due to the grid problems.
It was due to icing of a small pipe that feeds a pressure guage on the water supply for the steam plant. The pressure guage gave a false reading, and that tripped the plant. NOthing to do with the gird. And in fact, absent the false instrument reading there was no reason for shutdown. But you never take the risk with nuclear plant.
Unfortunately, this analysis doesn’t explain what really happened. It also provides poor policy recommendations, apparently from a predetermined point of view.
The analysis claims that wind decreased by 93 percent from January 18th to February 17th. But that’s a ridiculous comparison. A more appropriate comparison would be versus the average wind generation all of January 2021. Or all of February 2021.
Fortunately, I’ve done that:
Average wind power on February 17th: 2,579 MW
Average wind power in January 2021: 10,352 MW
Average wind power in February 2020: 10,341 MW
So a much more realistic reduction is approximately 75 percent.
Beyond the more realistic percentage reduction of 75 percent, there is the more important aspect of the absolute MW reduction. The absolute MW reduction is approximately 10,350 minus 2,579 = 7,771 MW.
That’s the key. That lost 7,771 MW would need to be made up by coal, nuclear, and natural gas. And the problem is that every single one of those sources of electrical generation was under-performing (with respect to their capacities) on February 17th.
Nuclear had one of four reactors down. So that was another ~1300 MW that was missing when it was needed most.
Coal production on February 17th averaged only 7,333 MW, even though coal production averaged over February 2020 was 9,144 MW…and coal summer capacity in ERCOT is a whopping 14,408 MW.
And natural gas production, which had performed admirably up to February 15th, had also collapsed by February 17th, generating an average of only 29,975 MW that day. That’s much lower than the average of 37,472 MW generated on February 14th. And it’s much, much lower than the summer capacity of natural gas plants in ERCOT, which stand at: 31,653 MW for natural gas combined cycle plants; 6,085 MW for natural gas turbine plants; and 11,158 MW for natural gas steam turbine plants…representing a total capacity for all natural gas plants of 49,817 MW.
This is a poor policy prescription which appears to have been predetermined. If there is any state in the United States that does *not* need more coal and nuclear, it’s arguably Texas! If natural gas plants in Texas had performed close to their total capacity of close to 50,000 MW, the February 15th onward disaster in Texas wouldn’t have happened…even with wind, coal, and nuclear all under-performing as they did.
It is an unmistakeable truth however, that the levels at which each fuel was expected to produce they were all operating at the levels needed UNTIL WIND FAILED. More gas plants would have meant a smaller percentage down for maintenance at any one time. More gas plants situated closer to fuel sources would have been able to ramp up production and maintain it.
You are looking for a scapegoat instead of doing a true root cause analysis. The root cause is that if the wind had not failed, TX would gone through this period unscathed.That simply cannot be denied.
RE:The reason for the nat gas dropoff was lack of fuel. The Feds had been petitioned to allow the nat gas plants to ramp up to maximum. The petition was denied because of “emissions”. Both of these contributed to the shortfall. There were apparently also some nat gas plants down for maintenance which contributed to not being able to hit summer capacity.
I think politifact says that they were granted permission to increase the gas plant production. However, I am skeptical of their comments most of the time. They used their usual pants on fire to say that wind and solar were not to blame.
I lived through a very nasty ice storm in the Fraser Valley, back in the late 1960’s. The skeleton power transmission towers developed ice on them so thick you practically couldn’t see through them. The transmission lines themselves were so coated they almost sagged to the ground before the towers themselves collapsed from the sheer weight of ice. They were falling down faster than they could be replaced. I haven’t seen any reports of transmission lines going down in Texas.
My brother, living in Woodinville WA, has power outages 2-3 times a year. To tide himself over during these periods, he bought a 3500w Honda gasoline-powered generator, and hired an electrician to install a transfer switch panel to control what part of the household would be energized.
I like this idea after having been here for all 3 of the deep freezes ’89, ’11 and ’21. A little light and heat through the cold period is much better than the alternative.
13:30 GMT – UK windmills still bravely holding up at a fabulous 1%.