tolakram wrote: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.
Based on pretty decent verifiable data you can breakdown the productivity gain/loss b/w each resource. For example, using last weeks crisis:
Nat Gas appeared to be around 70% effective at its worst moment - 31 GW produced vs. 44 GW capacity
Wind appeared to be around 16% effective at its worst moment - 4 GW produced vs. 25 GW Capacity (installed)
So when stress testing extremes, a way to break this down in simple terms could be: For every new 1 GW of installed capacity b/w Nat Gas vs.Wind, there is a net productivity gain of 540 MW favoring the Nat Gas side. 700 MW Nat Gas - 160 MW Wind = 540 MW Gain. Those are significant differences that need serious thought when evaluating future planning - pros and cons
Agreed, this review process needs to be an open/honest discussion with an attempt to remove any political leanings and spin jobs with the data/stick with the facts...it's a very serious topic.