Friday afternoon climate rap -- Did anyone learn anything from the February 2021 Texas blackouts?

Primary goal of electric grid 

= reliability

Primary characteristics of wind power 

= unreliable and unpredictable

Wind power for electric grids 

= asking for trouble

In February 2011, 3.2 million Texans had rolling blackouts, back when the total Texas wind nameplate capacity was only about 4% of total electricity consumption.

Of course wind power never reaches total nameplate capacity for long, especially during Texas winters.

And is sometimes near zero for an hour, for the whole state, like just before the 2021 blackout.

The long August 2011 report, which I read, and apparently no one else did, recommended “winterization” of the entire Texas energy infrastructure, even beyond power plants.

It did not recommend increasing wind power capacity by eight fold over the next ten years.

Because with wind power, the critical scientific equation is:

One windmill + no wind 

= no electricity, 

and

One bazillion windmills + no wind 

= no electricity

(Note: the same is true with very slow wind speeds)

In general, wind turbines begin to produce power at wind speeds of about 6.7 mph (3 m/s).

A turbine will achieve its nominal, or rated, power at approximately 26 mph to 30 mph (12 m/s to 13 m/s); this value is often used to describe the turbine’s generating capacity (or nameplate capacity).

Windmill “bird shredders” belong in museums, not connected to any electric grid, where reliability is the most important attribute, and wind speed is VERY unreliable.

Money and financial incentives were the root cause of the problems in Texas ... which has not been solved ... and probably won't be.

The financial incentives in Texas strongly favored building windmills, so they built lots of windmills.

The return on energy infrastructure winterization could be zero.

The return on new fossil fuel plants could be low -- if just used as backup power for windmills.

With a growing population, and rapidly growing wind power capacity, Texas needed MORE  fossil fuel power plants.

Meanwhile, they let their spare power capacity percentage fall to roughly half the national average -- improving their return on investment, but increasing risk.

For 10 years, the decision to build lots of windmills, with guaranteed returns on the investments, looked brilliant.

And then, suddenly, in February 2021, the weather was colder than in February 2011, and the cold weather lasted longer.

ERCOT did not even have a detailed plan to minimize problems with that type of weather.

On the other hand, 24 million Texans out of 29 million did NOT lose their electric power,

But very little of their power came from the wind.

Because there was not much wind, and half the Texas windmill blades were iced up.

The windmills did not have the optional deicing heaters .. because who would pay more for optional blade deicers in Texas?

I suppose Texans in February 2011 thought that with global warming ahead, it would never get that cold again.  

With that good guaranteed investment return on windmills, their nameplate capacity increased eight fold in the next 10 years.  

 

Big mistake.