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.