Gas Power Saves Texas From Blackouts, As Wind Power Collapses Again!
By Paul Homewood
Over the weekend the US declared a Grid Emergency in Texas, as temperatures plummeted.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-declares-texas-grid-emergency-180011531.html
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/texas-power-prices-spike-more-165419011.html
The emergency order from the US Energy Department allowed the state’s grid operator to exceed certain air pollution limits to boost generation amid record power demand in the state. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, whose service area includes 90% of electric customers in Texas, requested the emergency order Friday, warning it may need to resort to blackouts. TRANSLATION – fire up more coal and gas plants!
Fortunately a repetition of the blackouts last year was avoided. But as we can see, it was gas power which came to the rescue, as wind power collapsed to virtually nothing at the same time as demand surged:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/ERCO
Texas has 35 GW of wind capacity, but output was running below 5 GW throughout Saturday, and down to 2 GW for much of the day. This certainly was not due to lack of wind, quite the opposite in fact. Whether wind power collapsed because of the winds being too strong, or because of freezing up, I do not know. But either way it was a weather related issue.
Thankfully ERCOT was able to call on ample gas power capacity, both to replace the loss of wind power and meet surging demand, which peaked at 74 GW, about 15 GW more than normal.
Without that gas power, Texas would have faced a catastrophe.
You can forget about importing power from other regions as well, because the Arctic weather covered about two thirds of the country, so there would have been no surplus renewable power anywhere.
Joe Biden still wants carbon-free electricity by 2035. How many millions of Americans will freeze to death if he gets his way?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Having watched the destruction of the American economy and nation wrought by Biden on behalf of his puppet masters I would suggest that they know very well the pursuit of that pointless goal will further hobble to American economy because the marxist maggots who infest the education systems and all organs of government on both sides of the pond have one wish and one wish only and that is the end of our “terrible” capitalist system by one means or another.
Biden and his family are up there with the most corrupt Presidents in history- even if you include the Clinton’s. But it’s a close run thing.
Also, excuse my obvious ignorance but what exactly is “carbon free” about worthless virtue signalling wind mills….every aspect of their construction either requires the burning of hydrocarbons or derivatives of hydrocarbons in their construction. We is being ‘ad.
In case you didn’t see this when I posted this some time ago, see page 16 here:
Click to access blackrock-energy-and-resources-income-trust-plc-interim-report.pdf
Ludicrous!
Muchos gracias!
Just looked at this, provides great information. Thanks
Bearing in mind that CST in Texas is six hours behind GMT (i.e. Texas time is six hours earlier, certainly if you are viewing from the UK) try the play button here and see how the wind dies as the centre of the high pressure slowly tracks South: push through Christmas.
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=31.4;-99.4;5&l=wind-10m&t=20221222/0000
The main areas of wind farms are between Dallas and Lubbock/Amarillo and slightly South of that triangle, and behind Corpus Christi down to Reynosa on the Mexican border.
Then watch the weather bomb in temperature terms:
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=31.4;-99.4;5&l=temperature-2m&t=20221222/0000
My first visit to Houston was in the week before Christmas in 1997 when the weather was similar: the ice rink built in the open air on a downtown block vacant lot barely needing its coolers was visible from my 30th floor office window. The summer had two months of daily 100+F temperatures. Weather (and the El Niño).
It’s interesting to compare generation this time
with Feb 2021
Wind did contribute towards the peak this time but died soon after. There was no cliff of a cascading trip and knocked out compressors supplying CCGT stations with gas. Some lessons at least were learned.
Wind was at 2GW and they needed 74GW from Gas?
Simple answer from the Greens – we need 37 times more wind farms. Call it 50 to be on the safe side. That would be a capacity of around 1750GW….
…until the wind stopped. 😀
With ‘capacity,’ you get credit for what you MIGHT do.
They trumpet potential, not what is achievable. And, importantly, it’s not in their control.
No solution is possible from anyone who doesn’t even understand the problem.
Meanwhile this looks like XR types rather than the extreme right that the FBI want it to be:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11573437/3-Washington-state-electric-substations-vandalized.html
If only… if only… if only Texas has installed 100 times more wind power, then the gas turbines did not need to be turned on.
/sarc
I am just waiting for the headline
Renewable Energy from wind and solar not reliable due to CLIMATE CHANGE
I wonder how the ground/air source heat pumps are getting on in North America?
Madness.
An example of how well air source heat pumps cope this winter from South West England .
“Man accuses Bristol City Council of ‘leaving family to freeze’ for more than a week – Bristol Live” https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/man-accuses-bristol-city-council-7943929
The article talks about “boilers”. Is this heat pump? I can’t imagine a gas boiler would be placed on the outside of the house.
Heat pump failure
https://mobile.twitter.com/RossDynamicsLab/status/1606298304614014976
Fine let wind displace fossil fuel when its available but when will they realise that you can’t abandon fossil fuel generation unless you have a society that is both prepared to accept blackouts and the consequences. I know having both just makes generation more expensive but at the moment we need a half way house that maintains all the fossil fuel infrastructure whilst we demonstrate that a no fossil fuel society doesn’t exist and rechip people.
I read a comment somewhere that this time Texas is lucky because it hasn’t rained. In Feb 2021 it was frozen rain that did for the windmills.
Really it was the wind dying out that did for the windmills.
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=31.4;-99.4;5&l=wind-10m&t=20210214/0000
So did the gas lines get retrofitted back with their original GAS driven pumps or did they still use the Electric Gas pumps? That was why energy went down in texas in 2021. The electric gas pumps went offline and natural gas couldn’t be pushed to be consumed. If the gas line had its original GAS powered pumps then natural gas would have kept flowing and it would have looked like the trended diagram above.