Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Texas is a big place. Some areas get a lot more sun than others. 
Texas Power Failure
- Thread starter svetz
- Start date
Texas is a big place. Some areas get a lot more sun than others.
Everything is bigger in Texas. I know.
I lived in Houston for 13 years. Been there, done that, got the Fire ant bites to prove it.
Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sure, but the northern part of texas is between Oklahoma and New Mexico so I doubt it gets less sun than its neighbors up there.
I'm in south Louisiana, about the same latitude as Houston, where prevailing southern winds push moisture in from the gulf and can give us clouds for days.
I'm in south Louisiana, about the same latitude as Houston, where prevailing southern winds push moisture in from the gulf and can give us clouds for days.
I'm just yanking ArthurEld's chain. I'm not making a technical case.
I'm not making a technical case.
ArthurEld
Solar Wizard
I just noticed the south west states get more than Florida. Which seems odd.I'm just yanking ArthurEld's chain.
Cheyenne, WY
gets the most?
This guy is not right.
1. nat gas doubled its out put of power in the big Texas freeze.
2. there were problems or they would have more than doubled there out put
3. Wind and solar production went down.
4.If wind and solar are to do there part in a big freeze if you put up 1 wind mill you would have to put up 2 and let one stay off until the freeze comes and the same for solar.
5. The higher % wind and solar with out there part of the backup the worse of the problem is .
6. With out extra back up power we would have been in even worse trouble.
7. This is just one more point in the foolish wind and solar fairy tail .
ArthurEld
Solar Wizard
Wind, solar and batteries will be the long term solution. In my opinion anyway.
But it's not going to happen overnight.
But it's not going to happen overnight.
Woody
Solar Enthusiast
Here’s an article supporting your comments.
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Original article it references is from:
Wind Power Is a Disaster in Texas, No Matter What Paul Krugman Says | Mises Institute
Normally the boosters of renewable energy point with pride to Texas, yet when wind collapsed during the deep freeze, suddenly even its biggest fans admit that
In a nutshell, natural gas increased production 91% from same date 1yr prior while wind reduced its power output by 72% same date 1yr prior.
Different weather conditions, a year later and were there equipment changes, scheduld maintenance outages, ...blah blah so we clearly may not / are not comparing identical situations. But the fact is that natural gas increased power production big time along with solar and coal. Wind was the biggest reduction in power production but nuclear reduced too.
Looks to me there’s plenty of room for improvements in their power production, distribution, and management. So the take away should be, stop pointing tribal click fingers at each other and find / implement solutions so that they mitigate this from happening in the future.
svetz
Works in theory! Practice? That's something else
Florida would get a higher insolation, but we have those pesky rain storms blotting out the sky from May through November during prime production hours. Not like Corvallis where it rains non-stop for 6 months and seaweed grows on stop signs. More like an afternoon cloud burst that goes away... so the sun can turn the moisture into more humidity. ?
svetz
Works in theory! Practice? That's something else
The plot thickens!
Let's do some fact checking (reuters):- Wind generates 20% of total electricity in Texas (a lot more than I thought)
- Solar supplies 1.1%
- Texas lost 40% of its generating capacity
So, Wind turbines freezing up could have definitely added to the problem. But... wind turbines freezing up points to a lack of maintenance (they have them in Antarctica), same as the gas wells. The failure isn't really gas or wind; it's a human failure.
This article say's only "half" the wind turbines froze, so a 10% contributor at best. So, I'd have to agree with Snopes assessment, the impact from wind turbines freezing wasn't as big as the other problems.
From the ERCOT statement:
Here's an interesting similar article saying Germany's renewables were responsible for their February outages (mostly false).
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As an Engineer and a citizen I am amazed that in this day and age we have to endure outages, I can fund tin cans to Mars but refuse to invest in our essentials here. I refuse to accept failure, in my business failure means death. We CAN do better, we need to.
svetz
Works in theory! Practice? That's something else
That doesn't make renewables less flexible. After all, a 100 MW coal fired plant can't output more than 100 MW just because it's cold.
If anything, solar and wind suffer in flexibility when there isn't any sunshine or wind. But that's a known problem and the general solution is energy storage (similar to having stockpiles of natural gas for a gas facility). That's actually one of my big gripes, you always hear about energy producing solar or wind and hardly ever about storage (although it was nice to see storage in the Gemini project, see post #70). With renewables you always need a balance of production and storage.
IMHO, the failure of the TX grid was due to a failure to prepare. They did not implement the recommendations from 2011 for winterizing their power generation system. In an unregulated market, there wasn't any profit in it, and they weren't compelled to do so, so they didn't.
Had they implemented those winterization recommendations, this would likely have been nothing more than a notable freak cold snap with limited power outages and some rolling blackouts with far fewer dead.
Had they implemented those winterization recommendations, this would likely have been nothing more than a notable freak cold snap with limited power outages and some rolling blackouts with far fewer dead.
I said gas they run gas plants below max to have somthing for outages and such. There is little coal around me so don't know
All wind and solar is 100% all the time no way to make more.
OnTheRoadAgain
Solar Enthusiast
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Um, excuse me but......
Florida is The "Sunshine State". Says so right on the Tags
Texas gets more Hurricanes than Florida. And poor Louisiana !!
Hedges
I See Electromagnetic Fields!
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"California. The climate is right. For business."
www.pacificresearch.org
California’s Business Climate Continues to Receive Poor Scores - Pacific Research Institute
California has lived on the trope of being the hub of technology startups and innovation for decades. California’s economic success has long been touted and celebrated, none more so than the technology gold rush in the Bay Area. But despite California’s seemingly never-ending economic growth...
www.pacificresearch.org
svetz
Works in theory! Practice? That's something else
I don't know of any renewables at the utility scale that work that way.
Hydro
For example, hydro you just throttle back on the water volume and it throttles back the power. (ref)
| Solar All new PV solar systems have to follow UL 1741 (went into effect a few years back and most states have adopted it) that allow the utilities to throttle back solar. My microinverters throttle from 0 to 100% (ref). But worse case, you could just flip the switch and stop taking power - that doesn't hurt solar. You can take as much or as little as you want. |  |
Wind
Wind turbine's are a bit trickier.
The one thing all wind turbines have in common is some sort of braking feature, for example on the big ones you can rotate the blades angle of attack to vary the power or shut it down for maintenance. They have to have this feature to prevent damage during high-wind.
On a wind farm, typically the farm output is controllable per turbine. If you've ever driven past a wind farm you'll typically see some not spinning... they're usually not broken, they're turned "off" as there's no need for the power. But each turbine is generally 1 to 3 MW, so if you had a 300 MW field of 100x 3 MW wind turbines you could throttle the power anywhere from 0 to 300 MW by activating 0 to 300 turbines.
So, you could easily overbuild renewables just as you do fossil/nuclear plants. But, what makes more sense is to install energy storage. That way you don't need to overbuild for peak demand.
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hankcurt
Solar Enthusiast
I was really interested in the Texas power debacle just in terms of the technical issues and risk assessment vs. cost evaluations. However, when I tried to find useful information, I kept coming across propaganda that uses the most common trick in the sales profession, the false comparison. For instance, if I go into a fine clothing store to buy a high quality shirt, they are going to show me an $80 shirt that just happens to be 40% off that day, so I can get it for the low low price of $48. They want me to compare the marked price to the price they wish they could sell it for, rather than to the actual value of the item.
So in this energy production propaganda effort, I've seen thinks like the quotes from earlier in this thread:
None of these are relevant comparisons. Natural gas production was higher than a year ago, because a year ago the temperature was mild, and in mild temperatures when demand is low, the for-profit companies shut down the most expensive production. So what they are admitting here is that the electricity providers would rather generate power from wind because it is cheaper. This has no bearing on the reliability of the wind or natural gas infrastructure in freezing temperatures.
On the opposite side, the fact that this winter they had planned some outages of the wind generation capacity, but cancelled those outages due to high demand thus leading to the "higher than forecast wind power production" says nothing about the reliability of the wind generation infrastructure during freezing temperatures.
The one and only metric that really matters is:
How much power generation infrastructure is installed - vs - How much power generation infrastructure was operational when you needed it.
I haven't found any hard data on this. I really wanted to find a timeline of the systemic failures and responses to those failures, but being this industry is privatized in Texas, that information will be obfuscated to the maximum degree out of fear of future financial liability and litigation.
So in this energy production propaganda effort, I've seen thinks like the quotes from earlier in this thread:
or this one I heard elsewhere from some opposite leaning propaganda:
None of these are relevant comparisons. Natural gas production was higher than a year ago, because a year ago the temperature was mild, and in mild temperatures when demand is low, the for-profit companies shut down the most expensive production. So what they are admitting here is that the electricity providers would rather generate power from wind because it is cheaper. This has no bearing on the reliability of the wind or natural gas infrastructure in freezing temperatures.
On the opposite side, the fact that this winter they had planned some outages of the wind generation capacity, but cancelled those outages due to high demand thus leading to the "higher than forecast wind power production" says nothing about the reliability of the wind generation infrastructure during freezing temperatures.
The one and only metric that really matters is:
How much power generation infrastructure is installed - vs - How much power generation infrastructure was operational when you needed it.
I haven't found any hard data on this. I really wanted to find a timeline of the systemic failures and responses to those failures, but being this industry is privatized in Texas, that information will be obfuscated to the maximum degree out of fear of future financial liability and litigation.
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