Wednesday brought yet another unspeakably hot day to Texas and, alas, it was yet another day when wind energy failed the state’s consumers.
Indeed, as record heat and drought continue to hammer the Lone Star State, the inanity of the state’s multi-billion-dollar spending spree on wind energy becomes ever more apparent. On Wednesday afternoon, ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, declared a power emergency as some of the state’s generation units began to falter under the soaring demand for electricity. Electricity demand hit 66,552 megawatts, about 1,700 megawatts shy of the record set on August 3.
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As I wrote in these pages earlier this month, Texas has 10,135 megawatts of installed wind-generation capacity, which is nearly three times as much as any other state. And yet, on Wednesday, all of the state’s wind turbines mustered just 880 megawatts of power when electricity was needed the most. Put another way, even though wind turbines account for about 10 percent of Texas’s 103,000 megawatts of summer electricity-generation capacity, wind energy was able to provide just 1.3 percent of the juice the state needed on Wednesday afternoon to keep the lights on and the air conditioners humming.
None of this should be surprising. For years, ERCOT has counted just 8.7 percent of the state’s installed wind-generation capacity as “dependable capacity at peak.” What happened on Wednesday? Just 880 megawatts out of 10,135 megawatts of wind capacity — 8.68 percent — was actually moving electrons when consumers needed those electrons the most.
Apologists for the wind industry point to a single day in February, when, during a record cold snap, the state’s wind turbines were able to produce electricity when the grid was being stressed. Fine. On one day, wind generators produced more than expected. But the wind industry’s lobbyists want consumers to ignore this sun-bleached truth: Texas has far more super-hot days than it does frigid ones. Indeed, here in Austin, where I live, we’ve already had 70 days this summer with temperatures over 100 degrees, and there’s still no relief in sight. And on nearly every one of those hot days, ERCOT’s wind capacity has been AWOL. Each afternoon, as the temperature — and electricity demand — soars, the wind dies down:
This summer’s high demand for electricity has caught ERCOT off guard. In June, the grid operator projected that Texas’s electricity demand would not set any new records this summer. But demand is already exceeding levels that ERCOT didn’t expect to see until 2014. Over the past few weeks, as demand has strained the Texas grid, electricity prices have risen as high as $3,000 per megawatt-hour on the wholesale market, and large industrial users have been forced to curtail consumption in order to avoid blackouts.
And yet — and yet — the state is spending billions on projects that focus on wind energy rather than on conventional generation capacity. As Kate Galbraith of the Texas Tribune reported recently, the Texas Public Utility Commission is preparing the state’s ratepayers for higher prices. Consumers will soon be paying for new transmission lines that are being built solely so that the subsidy-dependent wind-energy profiteers can move electricity from their distant wind projects to consumers in urban areas.
It just goes to show that even conservatives, "compassionate" ones at that, will enlarge government for the sake of political beneficiaries at the expense of Americans.
That's the thing with Perry, you can't really believe what he says. To appear tough on immigration he calls for an end to sanctuary cities,supports Voter ID, makes a big flourish about billing homeland security for illegal alien incarceration costs, but his whole Texas governance has encouraged and incentivized illegal immigration. External Link
He talks about making the federal government as inconsequential as he can yet implements a massive HPV vaccination program for young Texas school girls. He talks about all the job growth in Texas but doesn't mention a lot of the growth has been in gov't jobs.
Just stand Perry and Cornyn (is that spelled Corn-in (=corny)) in front of a windmill and start them talking and there'll never be any lack of wind energy in TX!
This is loss of power is not surprising. A 10 year old could have easily figured out the result with the simple mathematics. Before any wind turbines were ever installed. The only 2 variables for output is air density (lower on a hot day) and wind speed (lower in the summer for all of North America).
From the simple equation
Wind power = 0.5 x Swept Area x Air Density x Velocity cubed
That is Velocity x Velocity x Velocity = Velocity cubed
Keep vetting Perry. He has nearly doubled the size of government in Texas from $49 billion in 2001 to $90 billion today.
You will find lots of stories of wasteful spending in Texas during his tenure.
He is perhaps the only Republican that can make the case that Obama's stimulus was not big enough.
Michelle Bachmann is a solid conservative, so is Rick Santorum. Even Romney held spending increases below the rate of inflation during his tenure as governor.
There is no need to go with a big government guy like Perry. His rhetoric during GOP primaries could not be any further from his actual record...
I agree with your point but you need to correct your statistics. You are using demand for ERCOT and installed generation for the entire state of Texas. Those are quite different entities. As a result you are overstating the amount of non-wind generation dramatically. Instead of 103,000 MW, ERCOT has access to 72,350 MW excluding wind. That is the correct comparison to the 66,552 MW of ERCOT load.
Wind generation didn't "fail" any more than any other generation source did. Together, they were unable to keep pace w. demand.
Try blaming the South Texas Nuclear power facility for its "failure" next.
Yes, wind failed miserably - as it fails everywhere. It promised the moon - it bearely got 100ft off the ground.
End all wind subsidies and renewable energy use mandates today.
As for Perry - this is an area he needs to address - the problem is that unless I hear from Romney he no longer believes in the myth known as AGW, there is no one to trust. What does Paul think?
The problem is that we are looking at a single day here for most of the this. 8% output was for one particular day. But the truth is that wind output runs about 30% on average of rated capacity and is relatively unpredictable and what people want in power is predictability. You want to know that your appliances will have power when they need it. So, not only is the power expensive, but you generally have to massively overbuild or provide backup generating capacity, both of which are expensive.
How about the whole truth? ERCOT reports wind energy has done very well during this heat wave, especially those installed near the cost where wind patterns closely follow demand.
ERCOT CEO Trip Doggett told the Austin American-Statesman, "We'd love to have more development of coastal wind. And we're hoping their ability to generate during the peak hours may encourage more development in that area."
Additionally, the distributed nature and slow ramp-up and ramp-down times of wind farms provides predictable and "smooth" changes in power generation, which are easy to integrate into the power grid. Where as unexpected mechanical problems at traditional power plants produce power fluctuations that are more difficult to deal with.
This guy comes back every time there is an article on wind and writes the same discredited garbage.
Wind did not do very well at all.
I like the way he tries to compare the ramp up/down time of properly functioning wind, with a coal plant in failure mode.
I wonder how quickly wind ramps down when it fails?
I see he's still trying to claim that wind power can be accurately predicted.
This is not the least bit surprising, you're pointing out the obvious; wind blows the least the during the day and the most at night. The sun on the other hand is strongest during the day and ... That is why generally when it comes to renewables, wind and solar kind of both need to be in the picture. They sort need to tag team in addition to using other sources as needed to fill in gaps for baseline support be it geothermal, hydro, etc. Short-term, short-term, short-term that is what all of you fossil fuel and dirty electricity advocates can think of. Blind consumption in the short run. It's ridiculous for some of the cleanest energy sources we have to be attacked like this. This article and the comment also suggest actually that this not really about wind - its about attacking some politician or the other.
Speaking of blind consumption.
What do you make of the fact that for wind and solar they both take more energy to build and install, than they will ever create during their lifespan?
That is 100% untrue, and one of those myths that I cannot believe still propagates. If you look at time for energy payback, a 3MW turbine is 6.8 months on average, and their life time is at least 20 years. This a number from Sandia National Laboratories. As for solar the new thin-film technology is a little over a year, and the old monocrystalline Si technology is a little over 3.5 year.
Your clam is refuted.
Now we can talk about the time for financial payback. This time is slightly longer, though obviously still profitable.
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