5 ms·

She makes some good points about capacity, then tears off on an anti wind rant. Wind has performed well in a number of extreme weather events around the world,

She makes some good points about capacity, then tears off on an anti wind rant. Wind has performed well in a number of extreme weather events around the world, including in Texas. Why harp on about wind reliability when gas and goal are offline completely? She seems to have difficulty in seeing the wood for the trees. Why might there be such storms, anything to do with all that fossil fuel consumption? It's something she refuses to even mention, which makes the essay hard to take seriously.

ashtonkem 6y ago
The issue is that a lot of people are hunting for a way to prove their ideological priors, rather than actually seriously considering the situation at hand.
- chasd00 6y ago
  very true. wind turbines work fine in very cold climates (see the Netherlands) but you have to get the "winter" package with de-icing capabilities but it costs more. Typically, you wouldn't need that in Texas but this wasn't a typical weather event by any stretch.
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    Except that the faults had occurred a number of times regionally in the last decade, and nothing had been done about it. Possibly an investment problem but some of the fixes (lubricant heaters) are not expensive; I would guess a general culture of 'no one told me it could happen', i.e. limited depth of experience in the utility company. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26186645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26186645
  - mcguire 6y ago
    Texas relies on wind production to a much greater extent than the Netherlands. "Wind power has been the fastest-growing source of energy in Texas' power grid. In 2015, wind power generation supplied 11% of Texas' energy grid. Last year it supplied 23% of the system's power, surpassing coal as the second-largest source of energy. ... An ERCOT report on generating capacity listed the top sources of power in the state:" Natural gas (51%) Wind (24.8%) Coal (13.4%) Nuclear (4.9%) Solar (3.8%) Hydro, biomass-fired units (1.9%) (https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/17/texas-energy-wind-power-outage-natural-gas-renewable-green-new-deal/6780546002/ https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/17/texas-energy...) "Energy from renewable sources accounted for only 7.4% of total final energy consumption (TFEC) in 2018, the third-lowest share among IEA member countries and well below the IEA median of 12.1%. ... Bioenergy is the primary source of renewable energy and includes transportation biofuels and direct use of biomass in heating and electricity.*" (https://www.iea.org/reports/the-netherlands-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/the-netherlands-2020)
altcognito 6y ago
In addition to the failure of some major baseload providers, another point missed was that the grid management was hampered by an out of date control system that didn't have ways to micromanage brownouts. Typically you might have the ability to shutdown 75% of the grid in a crisis (while maintaining power to critical facilities (hospitals, water supplies). If you've only got the ability to shut down 40% of the grid, your ability to control the crisis decreases.
762236 6y ago
I didn't see an anti-wind rant. She criticized an energy-only market, which ignored capacity, and as a consequence promotes deployment of wind and solar. Further, by ignoring capacity, Texas is now in this dire situation.
- angry_octet 6y ago
  Except that it is framed as a renewables problem, when it has just been demonstrated to clearly be a problem for gas and other thermal generators. It is playing a shell game to transfer the capacity risk from one fault risk (extreme cold, effect on gas lines, icing, transmission lines) to capacity risk in renewables.
  - edbob 6y ago
    The "wind outperformed expectations" quote that everyone is repeating out-of-context conveniently omits the fact that those expectations were for wind to produce a small fraction of its capacity. It "exceeded expectations" by dramatically underperforming every other power generation source, because expectations were far lower for wind than for anything else. The defense of wind is essentially, "Wind was not projected to be able to provide much power in this weather", and fossil generation is blamed because it was expected to be fully operational. The fact that fossil generation produced 2-3x what wind did relative to capacity is conveniently glossed over. If I go into town with buildings flooding from broken pipes and tell people that we've invested billions for years in wind generation which was projected not to be able to provide heat when we needed it, they're not going to say "oh, it's not wind's fault then because it was expected to be garbage in these conditions". They're going to want to know who decided to give out billions in subsidies to become a world leader in wind capacity knowing that it wouldn't work when we needed it. We could have invested in any other source of capacity instead, be it green, nuclear, or dirty, since they all performed at least 2-3x better than wind did. Wind has only been outputting 15-30% of its capacity, and around 15% when we most needed it. The article's analysis is spot on. The very last thing that Texas needs is capacity that only works in favorable weather conditions. Fossil capacity had very serious problems, but still left wind in the dust. The solutions are very debatable: Properly winterized wind generation is definitely worth looking into, as is nuclear (which had the best output of any generation source relative to capacity). But our current wind capacity is absolute garbage in this weather, and this must be acknowledged in order to make progress. Stating "wind exceeded projections" without explaining how pathetic those projections were is manipulative and dishonest.
abernard1 6y ago
> wind reliability when gas and goal are offline completely? This is false. Natural gas and coal increased production during the week of Feb 9-16. Natural gas energy production in TX on Feb 14 was over 10% the high summer spike of 2020.
- angry_octet 6y ago
  So how did they lose >30GW? Are you saying significant numbers of generation plants didn't go offline? Seriously, go cherry pick somewhere else.
  - abernard1 6y ago
    That is from its peak. Even after the whole market losing 30GW, natural gas production on the 14th was higher than the 9th. The cherry picking is that natural gas energy production increased dramatically to make up for the collapse of wind power on the 9th. Yes, it dropped 30% on the 14th, but from a dramatically higher point. On 2/15, natural gas energy production was even higher at 44GWh. Wind went from 23GWh to 3Gwh.
mcguire 6y ago
Her complaint seems to be that the way Texas' system is structured penalizes excess capacity. "This article from GreenTech media praises energy only markets as do many green interests. Capacity markets are characterized as wasteful. Andrew Barlow, Head of the PUC in Texas is quoted as follows, “Legislators have shown strong support for the energy-only market that has fueled the diversification of the state’s electricity generation fleet and yielded significant benefits for customers while making Texas the national leader in installed wind generation.” ... Rewarding resources for offering capacity advantages effectively penalizes renewables. ... The incentive for gas generation to do the right thing was taken away by Texas’s deliberate energy only market strategy." As a result, no one pays for backup capacity: wind and solar can't (without electrical storage) and fossil fuel can't afford to have it since they have to compete with wind and solar. This is the first I've heard about the cause of Texas' lack of capacity.

ashtonkem 6y ago

The issue is that a lot of people are hunting for a way to prove their ideological priors, rather than actually seriously considering the situation at hand.

chasd00 6y ago
very true. wind turbines work fine in very cold climates (see the Netherlands) but you have to get the "winter" package with de-icing capabilities but it costs more. Typically, you wouldn't need that in Texas but this wasn't a typical weather event by any stretch.
- angry_octet 6y ago
  Except that the faults had occurred a number of times regionally in the last decade, and nothing had been done about it. Possibly an investment problem but some of the fixes (lubricant heaters) are not expensive; I would guess a general culture of 'no one told me it could happen', i.e. limited depth of experience in the utility company. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26186645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26186645
- mcguire 6y ago
  Texas relies on wind production to a much greater extent than the Netherlands. "Wind power has been the fastest-growing source of energy in Texas' power grid. In 2015, wind power generation supplied 11% of Texas' energy grid. Last year it supplied 23% of the system's power, surpassing coal as the second-largest source of energy. ... An ERCOT report on generating capacity listed the top sources of power in the state:" Natural gas (51%) Wind (24.8%) Coal (13.4%) Nuclear (4.9%) Solar (3.8%) Hydro, biomass-fired units (1.9%) (https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/17/texas-energy-wind-power-outage-natural-gas-renewable-green-new-deal/6780546002/ https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/17/texas-energy...) "Energy from renewable sources accounted for only 7.4% of total final energy consumption (TFEC) in 2018, the third-lowest share among IEA member countries and well below the IEA median of 12.1%. ... Bioenergy is the primary source of renewable energy and includes transportation biofuels and direct use of biomass in heating and electricity.*" (https://www.iea.org/reports/the-netherlands-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/the-netherlands-2020)

altcognito 6y ago

In addition to the failure of some major baseload providers, another point missed was that the grid management was hampered by an out of date control system that didn't have ways to micromanage brownouts. Typically you might have the ability to shutdown 75% of the grid in a crisis (while maintaining power to critical facilities (hospitals, water supplies). If you've only got the ability to shut down 40% of the grid, your ability to control the crisis decreases.

762236 6y ago

I didn't see an anti-wind rant. She criticized an energy-only market, which ignored capacity, and as a consequence promotes deployment of wind and solar. Further, by ignoring capacity, Texas is now in this dire situation.

angry_octet 6y ago
Except that it is framed as a renewables problem, when it has just been demonstrated to clearly be a problem for gas and other thermal generators. It is playing a shell game to transfer the capacity risk from one fault risk (extreme cold, effect on gas lines, icing, transmission lines) to capacity risk in renewables.
- edbob 6y ago
  The "wind outperformed expectations" quote that everyone is repeating out-of-context conveniently omits the fact that those expectations were for wind to produce a small fraction of its capacity. It "exceeded expectations" by dramatically underperforming every other power generation source, because expectations were far lower for wind than for anything else. The defense of wind is essentially, "Wind was not projected to be able to provide much power in this weather", and fossil generation is blamed because it was expected to be fully operational. The fact that fossil generation produced 2-3x what wind did relative to capacity is conveniently glossed over. If I go into town with buildings flooding from broken pipes and tell people that we've invested billions for years in wind generation which was projected not to be able to provide heat when we needed it, they're not going to say "oh, it's not wind's fault then because it was expected to be garbage in these conditions". They're going to want to know who decided to give out billions in subsidies to become a world leader in wind capacity knowing that it wouldn't work when we needed it. We could have invested in any other source of capacity instead, be it green, nuclear, or dirty, since they all performed at least 2-3x better than wind did. Wind has only been outputting 15-30% of its capacity, and around 15% when we most needed it. The article's analysis is spot on. The very last thing that Texas needs is capacity that only works in favorable weather conditions. Fossil capacity had very serious problems, but still left wind in the dust. The solutions are very debatable: Properly winterized wind generation is definitely worth looking into, as is nuclear (which had the best output of any generation source relative to capacity). But our current wind capacity is absolute garbage in this weather, and this must be acknowledged in order to make progress. Stating "wind exceeded projections" without explaining how pathetic those projections were is manipulative and dishonest.

abernard1 6y ago

> wind reliability when gas and goal are offline completely? This is false. Natural gas and coal increased production during the week of Feb 9-16. Natural gas energy production in TX on Feb 14 was over 10% the high summer spike of 2020.

angry_octet 6y ago
So how did they lose >30GW? Are you saying significant numbers of generation plants didn't go offline? Seriously, go cherry pick somewhere else.
- abernard1 6y ago
  That is from its peak. Even after the whole market losing 30GW, natural gas production on the 14th was higher than the 9th. The cherry picking is that natural gas energy production increased dramatically to make up for the collapse of wind power on the 9th. Yes, it dropped 30% on the 14th, but from a dramatically higher point. On 2/15, natural gas energy production was even higher at 44GWh. Wind went from 23GWh to 3Gwh.

mcguire 6y ago

Her complaint seems to be that the way Texas' system is structured penalizes excess capacity. "This article from GreenTech media praises energy only markets as do many green interests. Capacity markets are characterized as wasteful. Andrew Barlow, Head of the PUC in Texas is quoted as follows, “Legislators have shown strong support for the energy-only market that has fueled the diversification of the state’s electricity generation fleet and yielded significant benefits for customers while making Texas the national leader in installed wind generation.” ... Rewarding resources for offering capacity advantages effectively penalizes renewables. ... The incentive for gas generation to do the right thing was taken away by Texas’s deliberate energy only market strategy." As a result, no one pays for backup capacity: wind and solar can't (without electrical storage) and fossil fuel can't afford to have it since they have to compete with wind and solar. This is the first I've heard about the cause of Texas' lack of capacity.