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Wind did fail spectularly. It was producing 15% of its installed capacity last night. It's all the way up to 30% now with more favorable conditions. Every other

by edbob 6y ago

Wind did fail spectularly. It was producing 15% of its installed capacity last night. It's all the way up to 30% now with more favorable conditions. Every other generation source vastly outperformed wind. Saying that wind exceeded expectations is like saying that your QB with a broken leg exceeded expectations by making it to the bench. You should still be looking for a QB that can play. If the argument is that wind is nearly useless in the winter by design, then that is all the more reason to promote alternatives. No one freezing right now is going to be comforted by the knowledge that our wind capacity was planned to be unavailable when it's coldest. Solar is fine, and is a trivial amount of the installed capacity in any case.

deleted 6y ago
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cduzz 6y ago
There is a big difference between installed capacity and how much is expected for a period of time. For instance, it is not 100% failure that a solar cell outputs no power overnight; that's just the way they work. There is plenty of wind generation going on in Canada or Sweden; one presumes the "make a wind generation system work in the cold" is a solved engineering task. Those windmills are a little more expensive. Is this a result of poor planning or is this novel failure? This smells like a failure driven entirely by inappropriate cost optimization.
- edbob 6y ago
  > This smells like a failure driven entirely by inappropriate cost optimization. Exactly. Due to the nature of the Texas climate, peak capacity will track summer demand and not account for once-in-a-lifetime freezes. We need proper planning and enforcement to ensure that we can output as much in the winter as we can in the summer. Hopefully it's as straightforward as weather-proofing our existing capacity. As you said, wind generation works fine in much colder climes. If a significant part of our capacity can't produce in cold weather, it should be phased out in favor of capacity that can. I'd love to see that be Canadian-style windmills, if that turns out to be able to produce consistently in winter (I have some doubt here because of the very low projections for our existing wind output, but perhaps more robust turbines will do much better). If wind turns out not to be able to meet that need sufficiently, then perhaps we should focus some of the subsidies on capacity that can. What we should never do is defend one preferred generation source without regard to whether it can supply what Texas actually needs, which is capacity that can produce consistent output in both summer and winter.

by edbob 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cduzz 6y ago

There is a big difference between installed capacity and how much is expected for a period of time. For instance, it is not 100% failure that a solar cell outputs no power overnight; that's just the way they work. There is plenty of wind generation going on in Canada or Sweden; one presumes the "make a wind generation system work in the cold" is a solved engineering task. Those windmills are a little more expensive. Is this a result of poor planning or is this novel failure? This smells like a failure driven entirely by inappropriate cost optimization.

edbob 6y ago
> This smells like a failure driven entirely by inappropriate cost optimization. Exactly. Due to the nature of the Texas climate, peak capacity will track summer demand and not account for once-in-a-lifetime freezes. We need proper planning and enforcement to ensure that we can output as much in the winter as we can in the summer. Hopefully it's as straightforward as weather-proofing our existing capacity. As you said, wind generation works fine in much colder climes. If a significant part of our capacity can't produce in cold weather, it should be phased out in favor of capacity that can. I'd love to see that be Canadian-style windmills, if that turns out to be able to produce consistently in winter (I have some doubt here because of the very low projections for our existing wind output, but perhaps more robust turbines will do much better). If wind turns out not to be able to meet that need sufficiently, then perhaps we should focus some of the subsidies on capacity that can. What we should never do is defend one preferred generation source without regard to whether it can supply what Texas actually needs, which is capacity that can produce consistent output in both summer and winter.