Texas is in the midst of an historic winter storm, which has created an energy crisis because many of their wind turbines are completely frozen, as reported on The rightscoop.
Green energy? Clean, inexpensive, renewable, right? What could possibly go wrong?
It’s more like tilting at windmills, as in Don Quixote’s ill-thought-out attacks on his imaginary enemies?
Wind power has long been popular as a clean energy resource, but the EPA notes that windmills are the least energy producing and most physically difficult renewable energy waste stream to address.
Nearly half of Texas’ installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.
Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend’s freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.
As of Sunday morning, those iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas’ installed wind generation capacity, although those West Texas turbines don’t typically spin to their full generation capacity this time of year.
“This is a unique winter storm that’s more widespread with lots of moisture in West Texas, where there’s a lot of times not a lot of moisture,” said Dan Woodfin, Senior Director of System Operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. “It’s certainly more than what we would typically assume.”
Wind power has been the fastest-growing source of energy in Texas’ power grid. In 2015 winder power generation supplied 11% of Texas’ energy grid. Last year it supplied 23% and overtook coal as the system’s second-largest source of energy after natural gas.
In Austin, wind power supplies roughly 19% of the city’s energy demands, all of which is passed from producers to consumers across the state grid. The city began adding several megawatts of wind energy capacity to its renewable energy portfolio in the 1990s from both West Texas and Gulf Coast wind farms.
The frozen turbines come as low temperatures strain the state’s power grid and force operators to call for immediate statewide conservation efforts, like unplugging non-essential appliances, turning down residential heaters and minimize use of electric lighting.
Wind turbines may be great during warm times of the year or during mild winters, but this year’s winter weather has demonstrated an inherent flaw in wind energy. Texas doesn’t get a lot of bad winter storms like this, but a viable back-up plan for when a hard winter hits seems not to have been well thought-out. Wind turbines likely aren’t tremendously popular right now.
As reported, helicopters are being used to spray chemicals on the turbine blades to unfreeze them, but frozen turbines seems like a problem that reaches back to the drawing board. Or perhaps what has happened here is politicians are forcing a square peg into a round hole again. Could there be an over-dependence on wind for energy? Perhaps the availability of alternative relief is at least part of the problem.
What say you Def-Con News readers? Power lines go down, sure. But an entire energy source going down? On the bright side, Al Gore seems to have finally solved the problem of global warming. Least wise in Texas!
