Texas Winter 2020-2021

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cheezyWXguy
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7501 Postby cheezyWXguy » Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:27 pm

orangeblood wrote:
Cerlin wrote:In addition to the statements above, ERCOT was only supposed to rely on 7% of wind power during the winter anyway. A total loss in wind power shouldn’t have resulted in 4.5 million people without power and that would have been greatly reduced if winterization of pipes occurred. 2/3rds of the power outages occurred from natural gas related issues and that’s unacceptable from a state that relies so heavily on gas.


That's an interesting way of looking at it. I just personally believe looking at Wind only through the winter lens is misleading. You lose 60% of installed wind capacity during the winter months (25 GW down to 10 GW). Wind gives you a massive disadvantage right out of the gate to start the winter heating season.

The 15 GW of capacity that we lose during winter months is extremely problematic as it puts way more pressure on our grid during the winter season. There are many more effective all-seasonal energy sources as an alternative. Taking 15 GW off a grid for 1/4th of a year doesn't make a lot of sense. Add 6 GW lost last week, that's 21 GW of energy capacity lost from wind alone. It makes it an extremely unreliable source during a high energy demand time of year. As far as Nat Gas goes, projecting any energy source to perform at a 100% clip during one of the most extreme Arctic Outbreak we've ever seen down here is very unrealistic. It actually performed quite well under the circumstances, almost a 70% effective rate (32 GW produced vs 44 GW capacity). As a comparison, Wind was actually at a 16% effective rate as it's misleading to not include capacity lost during winter months (4 GW produced vs 25 GW capacity)

My original point was to stop adding seasonal/much more unreliable resources like Wind to our Energy Grid and instead lets either 1) use that money to add more reliable energy/non-seasonal/better performing sources like Nat Gas, Nuclear and Coal and/or 2) replace our old/worn down Electricity Grid infrastructure with new and more reliable infrastructure. Although energy diversity is needed, ERCOT has gone too far with renewables as a % of our grid leaving us extremely exposed to extreme situations like last week!! The renewable funds/subsidies could be put to much more effective/efficient uses!

I truly hope no one finds these discussions confrontational, that is not my intention. I just find this to be an extremely important topic and know that there are some really smart people all over this board that can add a lot of valuable insight/opinions, regardless of where you stand!

Not at all, debate is healthy. But what I don’t understand is why you view the wind power failures as inherent to wind power itself, but not natural gas. It seems pretty clear the failure on both/all sources and infrastructure was due to a lack of weather proofing. Given how windy these systems were across the entire state, it seems likely to me that weatherproof wind power sources would have had a solid opportunity to capitalize on the situation. Especially since so many countries with climates similar to what we experienced here already do.

And just for the record on where I stand on energy diversity, I have several friends and relatives who work in oil and gas, and have some experience myself, which has given me the opportunity to gain insight into what is hype for/against the industry and what is not at various times over the last decade. However, I also see the long-term need to diversify energy sources to reduce the effect of manmade climate change. We will likely never completely rid ourselves of the need for fossil fuels, unless the pipe dream of nuclear fusion can be realized, but there are lot of missed opportunities in our current standings where renewables can substitute. What those situations are and how much, I’m all for debating, but I am still at a loss for how this situation is a renewables issue and not a weather proofing issue.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7502 Postby Tejas89 » Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:51 am

Most state leaders have backed off the “it’s the windmills fault” narrative, thankfully.

The problem, of course, is when they go on social media or Hannity and light a match last week. It tends to create an inferno of misinformation. As a country, we’re all too familiar with that phenomenon, now aren’t we?

Back to the weather. A low of -2 last week and high near 80 today. Nuts. :sun:
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7503 Postby InfernoFlameCat » Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:33 am

Thats Texas weather for you!
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7504 Postby TheAustinMan » Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:43 am

rwfromkansas wrote:
Could I use this in our yearbook? Not sure if I will, but will pass it on to the kids. If so, do you have a higher-res version?


Here's a link. The image is 4800 pixels by 2700 pixels.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7505 Postby orangeblood » Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:44 am

cheezyWXguy wrote:Not at all, debate is healthy. But what I don’t understand is why you view the wind power failures as inherent to wind power itself, but not natural gas. It seems pretty clear the failure on both/all sources and infrastructure was due to a lack of weather proofing. Given how windy these systems were across the entire state, it seems likely to me that weatherproof wind power sources would have had a solid opportunity to capitalize on the situation. Especially since so many countries with climates similar to what we experienced here already do.

And just for the record on where I stand on energy diversity, I have several friends and relatives who work in oil and gas, and have some experience myself, which has given me the opportunity to gain insight into what is hype for/against the industry and what is not at various times over the last decade. However, I also see the long-term need to diversify energy sources to reduce the effect of manmade climate change. We will likely never completely rid ourselves of the need for fossil fuels, unless the pipe dream of nuclear fusion can be realized, but there are lot of missed opportunities in our current standings where renewables can substitute. What those situations are and how much, I’m all for debating, but I am still at a loss for how this situation is a renewables issue and not a weather proofing issue.


Ok, a few things to explain my reasoning:

1) Re: Nat Gas - I know first hand that the weather proofing issue is misleading. A significant number of Nat Gas wells, particularly in West Texas, were shut down not due to "weather proofing" but because the electricity was cut-off to their vital infrastructure (water disposal facilities, compressor stations, etc.) through the ERCOT lead rolling blackouts. This left Nat Gas Operators no choice but to shut-in their wells as there was no ability to get their product to market. This appears to be more of a logistics issues, not a weather proofing issue.

2) The glaring issue, IMO, when looking at the bigger picture of our grid is the massive drop off in availability from Summer to Winter Months. We go from 86 GW of capacity in Summer Months down to 67 GW in Winter Months. 15 of the 19 GW lost during winter months are from Wind, Doesn't that seem extremely problematic and put more pressure on all the other sources ?? Why are we adding resources that are only fully functional during a certain time of year and not others, particularly when there are more efficient alternatives that provide Energy year round ??

Reliability is a huge need with any energy grid and when you have 18% of your grid offline (Wind), during a vital time of year like Winter, that is a major problem!
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7506 Postby Iceresistance » Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:47 am

InfernoFlameCat wrote:Thats Texas weather for you!

Well, Try Oklahoma Weather

It got down to -12°F this morning 1 week ago, now it's expected to be 70°F today! CRAZY
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Winter 2020-2021 :cold:

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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7507 Postby InfernoFlameCat » Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:53 am

Iceresistance wrote:
InfernoFlameCat wrote:Thats Texas weather for you!

Well, Try Oklahoma Weather

It got down to -12°F this morning 1 week ago, now it's expected to be 70°F today! CRAZY

We don't mention Oklahoma weather down here; its forbidden. Jk =D. Here where I am in north Georgia, weather is pretty mild. Never went into the teens this winter and never over 100 last summer. Besides tornadoes (I get quite a bit, enough that I have seen more than one,) it is fairly nice.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7508 Postby tolakram » Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:21 am

orangeblood wrote:
Reliability is a huge need with any energy grid and when you have 18% of your grid offline (Wind), during a vital time of year like Winter, that is a major problem!



Reliability is something the Texas energy commission, or whatever they're called, can't seem to handle. This was a classic risk mitigation failure and blaming any one thing is wrong, and will be used as a scapegoat to hide the gross incompetency required to kill a states power grid because temperatures got cold. The primary cause of the power shortage was frozen natural gas lines and frozen instruments. Every power source suffered failures in Texas, wind being just one of them. Wind turbines can work just fine in very cold weather, there are plenty of installation examples (Indiana, Antartica!) that don't have these freeze up issues.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7509 Postby cheezyWXguy » Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:44 am

orangeblood wrote:
cheezyWXguy wrote:Not at all, debate is healthy. But what I don’t understand is why you view the wind power failures as inherent to wind power itself, but not natural gas. It seems pretty clear the failure on both/all sources and infrastructure was due to a lack of weather proofing. Given how windy these systems were across the entire state, it seems likely to me that weatherproof wind power sources would have had a solid opportunity to capitalize on the situation. Especially since so many countries with climates similar to what we experienced here already do.

And just for the record on where I stand on energy diversity, I have several friends and relatives who work in oil and gas, and have some experience myself, which has given me the opportunity to gain insight into what is hype for/against the industry and what is not at various times over the last decade. However, I also see the long-term need to diversify energy sources to reduce the effect of manmade climate change. We will likely never completely rid ourselves of the need for fossil fuels, unless the pipe dream of nuclear fusion can be realized, but there are lot of missed opportunities in our current standings where renewables can substitute. What those situations are and how much, I’m all for debating, but I am still at a loss for how this situation is a renewables issue and not a weather proofing issue.


Ok, a few things to explain my reasoning:

1) Re: Nat Gas - I know first hand that the weather proofing issue is misleading. A significant number of Nat Gas wells, particularly in West Texas, were shut down not due to "weather proofing" but because the electricity was cut-off to their vital infrastructure (water disposal facilities, compressor stations, etc.) through the ERCOT lead rolling blackouts. This left Nat Gas Operators no choice but to shut-in their wells as there was no ability to get their product to market. This appears to be more of a logistics issues, not a weather proofing issue.

2) The glaring issue, IMO, when looking at the bigger picture of our grid is the massive drop off in availability from Summer to Winter Months. We go from 86 GW of capacity in Summer Months down to 67 GW in Winter Months. 15 of the 19 GW lost during winter months are from Wind, Doesn't that seem extremely problematic and put more pressure on all the other sources ?? Why are we adding resources that are only fully functional during a certain time of year and not others, particularly when there are more efficient alternatives that provide Energy year round ??

Reliability is a huge need with any energy grid and when you have 18% of your grid offline (Wind), during a vital time of year like Winter, that is a major problem!


Yes, agreed on point one. It would seem that the isolated nature of the Texas power grid relative to the rest of the country made it difficult up front to draw additional power from outside sources to meet the increased demand as temperatures dropped and stayed there. Without that extra power, blackouts implemented allowed infrastructure to freeze when sitting idle.

As for point 2, why does wind power generation drop in the winter time when there is more wind to capitalize on from an increased frequency of storm systems moving through? It would seem the answer would either be a lack of weather proofing, or that cold weather packages reduce efficiency to some degree since they require power themselves to operate. But this can be said for generation and transportation of either source. If it’s a cost-effectiveness issue, it’s technology issue, which is temporary.

In my opinion, wind will always be a supplemental power source, but the events that have unfolded over the last two weeks don’t convince me that continuing to use wind as a supplemental source is a bad idea. It tells me that a lack of planning, regulation, and maintenance is a dire problem. We had a wake up call 10 years ago and the legislature did nothing.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7510 Postby orangeblood » Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:45 am

tolakram wrote:
orangeblood wrote:
Reliability is a huge need with any energy grid and when you have 18% of your grid offline (Wind), during a vital time of year like Winter, that is a major problem!



Reliability is something the Texas energy commission, or whatever they're called, can't seem to handle. This was a classic risk mitigation failure and blaming any one thing is wrong, and will be used as a scapegoat to hide the gross incompetency required to kill a states power grid because temperatures got cold. The primary cause of the power shortage was frozen natural gas lines and instruments. Every power source suffered failures in Texas, wind being just one of them. Wind turbines can work just fine in very cold weather, there are plenty of installation examples (Indiana, Antartica!) that don't have these freeze up issues.


Why do you and many ignore the fact that we have 15 GW of wind capacity (making up 18% of our entire capacity) offline during the winter months ? Do you not think that is a problem ? I'm starting with the number 1 on the list of lost capacity from seasonal loss/frozen lines and that was Wind (totaling 21 GW), that's why I'm so focused there. This lost capacity theoretically could've saved us from this debacle.

Also, this wasn't just isolated to Texas...several upper midwest and northern plains States had rolling blackouts last week as well!!
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7511 Postby orangeblood » Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:02 am

cheezyWXguy wrote:
orangeblood wrote:
cheezyWXguy wrote:Not at all, debate is healthy. But what I don’t understand is why you view the wind power failures as inherent to wind power itself, but not natural gas. It seems pretty clear the failure on both/all sources and infrastructure was due to a lack of weather proofing. Given how windy these systems were across the entire state, it seems likely to me that weatherproof wind power sources would have had a solid opportunity to capitalize on the situation. Especially since so many countries with climates similar to what we experienced here already do.

And just for the record on where I stand on energy diversity, I have several friends and relatives who work in oil and gas, and have some experience myself, which has given me the opportunity to gain insight into what is hype for/against the industry and what is not at various times over the last decade. However, I also see the long-term need to diversify energy sources to reduce the effect of manmade climate change. We will likely never completely rid ourselves of the need for fossil fuels, unless the pipe dream of nuclear fusion can be realized, but there are lot of missed opportunities in our current standings where renewables can substitute. What those situations are and how much, I’m all for debating, but I am still at a loss for how this situation is a renewables issue and not a weather proofing issue.


Ok, a few things to explain my reasoning:

1) Re: Nat Gas - I know first hand that the weather proofing issue is misleading. A significant number of Nat Gas wells, particularly in West Texas, were shut down not due to "weather proofing" but because the electricity was cut-off to their vital infrastructure (water disposal facilities, compressor stations, etc.) through the ERCOT lead rolling blackouts. This left Nat Gas Operators no choice but to shut-in their wells as there was no ability to get their product to market. This appears to be more of a logistics issues, not a weather proofing issue.

2) The glaring issue, IMO, when looking at the bigger picture of our grid is the massive drop off in availability from Summer to Winter Months. We go from 86 GW of capacity in Summer Months down to 67 GW in Winter Months. 15 of the 19 GW lost during winter months are from Wind, Doesn't that seem extremely problematic and put more pressure on all the other sources ?? Why are we adding resources that are only fully functional during a certain time of year and not others, particularly when there are more efficient alternatives that provide Energy year round ??

Reliability is a huge need with any energy grid and when you have 18% of your grid offline (Wind), during a vital time of year like Winter, that is a major problem!


Yes, agreed on point one. It would seem that the isolated nature of the Texas power grid relative to the rest of the country made it difficult up front to draw additional power from outside sources to meet the increased demand as temperatures dropped and stayed there. Without that extra power, blackouts implemented allowed infrastructure to freeze when sitting idle.

As for point 2, why does wind power generation drop in the winter time when there is more wind to capitalize on from an increased frequency of storm systems moving through? It would seem the answer would either be a lack of weather proofing, or that cold weather packages reduce efficiency to some degree since they require power themselves to operate. But this can be said for generation and transportation of either source. If it’s a cost-effectiveness issue, it’s technology issue, which is temporary.

In my opinion, wind will always be a supplemental power source, but the events that have unfolded over the last two weeks don’t convince me that continuing to use wind as a supplemental source is a bad idea. It tells me that a lack of planning, regulation, and maintenance is a dire problem. We had a wake up call 10 years ago and the legislature did nothing.


Fair points....and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying wind as a supplemental source is a entirely bad idea, it's just that I believe it has become too big of a % of our grid. We now rely on it too much at this point.

Re: Wind loss - I believe it partly due to winter maintenance but also partly due to the different seasonal wind patterns and the subsequent geographic location of these wind turbines, most are more efficient during the Summer Months as the wind patterns are stronger in those locals.

Here is the breakdown of renewables as a % of installed capacity for the winter season, according to the ERCOT 2020-21 Final Winter Season Assessment Report (SARA):

Coastal Wind, Peak Average Capacity Contribution, MW: - 1,480 - Based on 43% of installed capacity for coastal wind resources (winter season) per ERCOT Nodal Protocols Section 3.2.6.2.2
Panhandle Wind, Peak Average Capacity Contribution, MW: - 1,411 - Based on 32% of installed capacity for panhandle wind resources (winter season) per ERCOT Nodal Protocols Section 3.2.6.2.2
Other Wind, Peak Average Capacity Contribution, MW : - 3,251 - Based on 19% of installed capacity for other wind resources (winter season) per ERCOT Nodal Protocols Section 3.2.6.2.2
Solar Utility-Scale, Peak Average Capacity Contribution, MW: - 269 - Based on 7% of rated capacity for solar resources (winter season) per Nodal Protocols Section 3.2.6.2.2
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7512 Postby Iceresistance » Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:15 am

Meteorological Winter ends in 5 days . . .
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7513 Postby tolakram » Tue Feb 23, 2021 11:51 am

orangeblood wrote:
tolakram wrote:
orangeblood wrote:
Reliability is a huge need with any energy grid and when you have 18% of your grid offline (Wind), during a vital time of year like Winter, that is a major problem!



Reliability is something the Texas energy commission, or whatever they're called, can't seem to handle. This was a classic risk mitigation failure and blaming any one thing is wrong, and will be used as a scapegoat to hide the gross incompetency required to kill a states power grid because temperatures got cold. The primary cause of the power shortage was frozen natural gas lines and instruments. Every power source suffered failures in Texas, wind being just one of them. Wind turbines can work just fine in very cold weather, there are plenty of installation examples (Indiana, Antartica!) that don't have these freeze up issues.


Why do you and many ignore the fact that we have 15 GW of wind capacity (making up 18% of our entire capacity) offline during the winter months ? Do you not think that is a problem ? I'm starting with the number 1 on the list of lost capacity from seasonal loss/frozen lines and that was Wind (totaling 21 GW), that's why I'm so focused there. This lost capacity theoretically could've saved us from this debacle.

Also, this wasn't just isolated to Texas...several upper midwest and northern plains States had rolling blackouts last week as well!!


I'm not ignoring that, why do you think I am? When heating demand rises rapidly you will always have rolling blackouts to protect the grid. The Texas grid did not collapse because of the planned blackouts, but the blackouts had to be severe due to the lack of capacity. Blackouts in other states were minimal, the longest I could find was 90 minutes in Kansas. Iowa had 45 minute rolling outages due to the extremely high demand, with 42% of power generated in Iowa coming from wind. So what, wind is not the issue. Note I don't see how to judge what Iowa usage percentages are, just generation percentages. Texas is unique because since the 30's no power from other states goes in or out of Texas.

Again, wind has nothing to do with it, lack of winterizing is the issue. There is nothing unique about turbines and cold weather and running turbines in cold weather is a problem solved years ago.

I'm not a big fan of wind generation by the way, I think the turbines are eyesores. What I am a fan of is making sure we know the facts, and in this case wind doesn't seem to bear any undo responsibility for the outages as it's capacity was reduced for most of the same reasons as the rest of the sources. Lack of appropriate winterization.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7514 Postby orangeblood » Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:46 pm

tolakram wrote:
orangeblood wrote:
tolakram wrote:

Reliability is something the Texas energy commission, or whatever they're called, can't seem to handle. This was a classic risk mitigation failure and blaming any one thing is wrong, and will be used as a scapegoat to hide the gross incompetency required to kill a states power grid because temperatures got cold. The primary cause of the power shortage was frozen natural gas lines and instruments. Every power source suffered failures in Texas, wind being just one of them. Wind turbines can work just fine in very cold weather, there are plenty of installation examples (Indiana, Antartica!) that don't have these freeze up issues.


Why do you and many ignore the fact that we have 15 GW of wind capacity (making up 18% of our entire capacity) offline during the winter months ? Do you not think that is a problem ? I'm starting with the number 1 on the list of lost capacity from seasonal loss/frozen lines and that was Wind (totaling 21 GW), that's why I'm so focused there. This lost capacity theoretically could've saved us from this debacle.

Also, this wasn't just isolated to Texas...several upper midwest and northern plains States had rolling blackouts last week as well!!


I'm not ignoring that, why do you think I am? When heating demand rises rapidly you will always have rolling blackouts to protect the grid. The Texas grid did not collapse because of the planned blackouts, but the blackouts had to be severe due to the lack of capacity. Blackouts in other states were minimal, the longest I could find was 90 minutes in Kansas. Iowa had 45 minute rolling outages due to the extremely high demand, with 42% of power generated in Iowa coming from wind. So what, wind is not the issue. Note I don't see how to judge what Iowa usage percentages are, just generation percentages. Texas is unique because since the 30's no power from other states goes in or out of Texas.

Again, wind has nothing to do with it, lack of winterizing is the issue. There is nothing unique about turbines and cold weather and running turbines in cold weather is a problem solved years ago.


All you need to do is look at the historical data to realize there is something unique about the seasonality of wind in Texas though. We lose around 18% of our total capacity before Winter even starts mainly due to the seasonality of Wind Power contributions in Texas. ERCOT has to recalculate renewable capacity contributions every season because of the intermittent nature of this resource. That massive loss and inconsistency puts an extreme amount of pressure on this grid. A lot of Nat Gas is essentially in place as a backup to wind, this doesn't make a lot of logical sense.

Once blackouts began due to extreme demand/lower capacity due to seasonality wind loss, it compounded the problem by shutting down some of our vital Nat Gas producing wells (backup production)! Wind was the first domino to fall setting the wheels in motion for this disaster.
Last edited by orangeblood on Tue Feb 23, 2021 2:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7515 Postby hriverajr » Tue Feb 23, 2021 12:51 pm

tolakram wrote:
orangeblood wrote:
tolakram wrote:

Reliability is something the Texas energy commission, or whatever they're called, can't seem to handle. This was a classic risk mitigation failure and blaming any one thing is wrong, and will be used as a scapegoat to hide the gross incompetency required to kill a states power grid because temperatures got cold. The primary cause of the power shortage was frozen natural gas lines and instruments. Every power source suffered failures in Texas, wind being just one of them. Wind turbines can work just fine in very cold weather, there are plenty of installation examples (Indiana, Antartica!) that don't have these freeze up issues.


Why do you and many ignore the fact that we have 15 GW of wind capacity (making up 18% of our entire capacity) offline during the winter months ? Do you not think that is a problem ? I'm starting with the number 1 on the list of lost capacity from seasonal loss/frozen lines and that was Wind (totaling 21 GW), that's why I'm so focused there. This lost capacity theoretically could've saved us from this debacle.

Also, this wasn't just isolated to Texas...several upper midwest and northern plains States had rolling blackouts last week as well!!


I'm not ignoring that, why do you think I am? When heating demand rises rapidly you will always have rolling blackouts to protect the grid. The Texas grid did not collapse because of the planned blackouts, but the blackouts had to be severe due to the lack of capacity. Blackouts in other states were minimal, the longest I could find was 90 minutes in Kansas. Iowa had 45 minute rolling outages due to the extremely high demand, with 42% of power generated in Iowa coming from wind. So what, wind is not the issue. Note I don't see how to judge what Iowa usage percentages are, just generation percentages. Texas is unique because since the 30's no power from other states goes in or out of Texas.

Again, wind has nothing to do with it, lack of winterizing is the issue. There is nothing unique about turbines and cold weather and running turbines in cold weather is a problem solved years ago.

I'm not a big fan of wind generation by the way, I think the turbines are eyesores. What I am a fan of is making sure we know the facts, and in this case wind doesn't seem to bear any undo responsibility for the outages as it's capacity was reduced for most of the same reasons as the rest of the sources. Lack of appropriate winterization.


Attempt to focus on windpower alone? All types of power production went offline. Perhaps if other areas were winterized in a sufficient manner we never would have had this crisis.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7516 Postby orangeblood » Tue Feb 23, 2021 1:05 pm

hriverajr wrote:
tolakram wrote:
orangeblood wrote:
Why do you and many ignore the fact that we have 15 GW of wind capacity (making up 18% of our entire capacity) offline during the winter months ? Do you not think that is a problem ? I'm starting with the number 1 on the list of lost capacity from seasonal loss/frozen lines and that was Wind (totaling 21 GW), that's why I'm so focused there. This lost capacity theoretically could've saved us from this debacle.

Also, this wasn't just isolated to Texas...several upper midwest and northern plains States had rolling blackouts last week as well!!


I'm not ignoring that, why do you think I am? When heating demand rises rapidly you will always have rolling blackouts to protect the grid. The Texas grid did not collapse because of the planned blackouts, but the blackouts had to be severe due to the lack of capacity. Blackouts in other states were minimal, the longest I could find was 90 minutes in Kansas. Iowa had 45 minute rolling outages due to the extremely high demand, with 42% of power generated in Iowa coming from wind. So what, wind is not the issue. Note I don't see how to judge what Iowa usage percentages are, just generation percentages. Texas is unique because since the 30's no power from other states goes in or out of Texas.

Again, wind has nothing to do with it, lack of winterizing is the issue. There is nothing unique about turbines and cold weather and running turbines in cold weather is a problem solved years ago.

I'm not a big fan of wind generation by the way, I think the turbines are eyesores. What I am a fan of is making sure we know the facts, and in this case wind doesn't seem to bear any undo responsibility for the outages as it's capacity was reduced for most of the same reasons as the rest of the sources. Lack of appropriate winterization.


Attempt to focus on windpower alone? All types of power production went offline. Perhaps if other areas were winterized in a sufficient manner we never would have had this crisis.


Fair enough. I'm just making the counter-argument that perhaps retiring the 12 GW of Coal and Nat Gas over past 15 years (much more reliable resource) and replacing with 15 GW new Wind (less reliable) was a mistake, this crisis could've been averted as well!
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7517 Postby TheProfessor » Tue Feb 23, 2021 3:34 pm

Just on the energy discussion, I've always been on board with pushing forward with nuclear energy. It's far cleaner than gas and other fossil fuels and it's far more efficient than wind and solar. There is also thought that newer reactors will be able to re-use nuclear waste, which would be ground breaking. There are a lot of fears with nuclear energy, a lot of them are false. The main thing that's needed is for it to be modernized in building so it's more cost effective and still safe.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7518 Postby tolakram » Tue Feb 23, 2021 3:43 pm

orangeblood wrote:Fair enough. I'm just making the counter-argument that perhaps retiring the 12 GW of Coal and Nat Gas over past 15 years (much more reliable resource) and replacing with 15 GW new Wind (less reliable) was a mistake, this crisis could've been averted as well!



I'm not sure this is true, that's what needs to be figured out. Natural gas had the largest outage during this event due to frozen equipment, even a nuclear reactor went offline for the same reason. I understand your point, replacing all the wind with something more consistent might have averted the outage, but I think it would have been a negligible improvement. Hopefully it will be reviewed fairly and changes will be put in place so it doesn't happen again.
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7519 Postby somethingfunny » Tue Feb 23, 2021 3:48 pm

I am absolutely in love with the fact that this discussion about energy has been civil and based on serious data. I've not seen a conversation like this anywhere else on the Internet this week. Thank you!!!
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Re: Texas Winter 2020-2021

#7520 Postby Texas Snowman » Tue Feb 23, 2021 4:14 pm

Interesting...

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@KOCOdamonlane — Oklahoma City: This month will go down as the coldest February on record and likely the 2nd coldest month ever on record.
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