Posted on 02/27/2008 5:19:12 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:11pm EST
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday.
Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said a decline in wind energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the state.
The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency plan at 6:41 PM CST (0041 GMT), ERCOT said in a statement.
System operators curtailed power to interruptible customers to shave 1,100 megawatts of demand within 10 minutes, ERCOT said. Interruptible customers are generally large industrial customers who are paid to reduce power use when emergencies occur.
No other customers lost power during the emergency, ERCOT said. Interruptible customers were restored in about 90 minutes and the emergency was over in three hours.
ERCOT said the grid's frequency dropped suddenly when wind production fell from more than 1,700 megawatts, before the event, to 300 MW when the emergency was declared.
In addition, ERCOT said multiple power suppliers fell below the amount of power they were scheduled to produce on Tuesday. That, coupled with the loss of wind generated in West Texas, created problems moving power to the west from North Texas.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Put your wind turbines out to sea, and have them electrolyse water to hydrogen, which is either piped ashore, or picked up by tankers with H2 compressors.
Use the H2 for cars and trucks.
Integrate the wind power and store it.
If you use wind for grid power, you must have almost an equal capacity of steam turbines idling, in case the wind dies over ten minutes!
Alternate title: “Texas in the power doldrums”
“The wind stops and your power goes out????”
Actually, it was probably HIGH winds. The cold front went through on that day. When the winds get too high, they stop the turbines to prevent them from comming apart.
Agree - I can’t stop laughing. Who were the rocket scientists who decided that Texas could depend upon wind power to generate required electricity.
Living in a So. Cal desert area packed with wind turbines, it is obvious, even in the high wind pass location of these turbines, that there are days when NO WIND IS BLOWING.
That is why wind turbines are just more environmentalist BS. They can never be used as a replacement for other sources of electricity because they are not dependable. If it weren’t for government required subsidies, you wouldn’t find a wind turbine anywhere.
Wow an alternate energy source that is prone to not live up to its hype. Imagine that!
PING!! Adding “New Mexico” as a topic because our very own King Bill opposes more conventional power plants (especially one proposed on the Navajo reservation and supported by the tribe) and has pushed into law that 15 percent of the states power must come from renewables by 2015 and 20 percent by 2020. Guess we had better plan on Coleman lanterns and wood stove heat for calm winter nights in the future.
This technology does not exist and even if it did it would be pretty ugly.
Except in Florida.
It was all up here in Oklahoma.
Send in Obama. That pompous racist blowhard has enough hot air to power a small subdivision. And if more is needed send in his pompous racist blowhard wife, and then you can power a small city on hot air.
But now because of the environazi's, we're going back wards with wind and solar power, where once again our comfort and industry are dependence on what "mother nature" throws at us at any given time.
It's absurd.
I read where a few years ago when CA was having it's heat waves, the capacity factor for wind generators in CA dropped to something in the range of 0-5%. Basically, the wind wasn't blowing.
Now, that's a good power source for you. Just when you need it the most, it isn't there for you. Now, during that time, IIRC, the state's nuclear generators (SONGS and Diablo Canyon) were running at near full capacity, cranking out the juice, putting megawatts out on the wires. The nukes didn't care that the wind wasn't blowing.
IOW, wind failed, but the good old reliable nukes kept running. Funny how neither of those stories made the papers.
Yeah, that headline should say “Break In Wind Causes Texas Power Grid Emergency”.
“This technology does not exist “
And won’t until it’s developed. As for ugly, that depends on details yet to be discovered.
Perhaps not at sea- perhaps somewhere where there is both wind and water, especially water that is not useful for anything else, like sewage plant effluent ( a sewage plant tht makes methane too).
Low power density, intermittent sources are not suitable for main grid, but anywhere that the energy can be added in economically is a boost. Back in the 40’s pumped storage was not feasible, now there are places where they pump water to a tank on a hill and reverse the flow through a generator during peaks.
In that case why don't we use dilithium crystals like on Star Trek.
No need to build real power infrastructure, just wait for the dilithium crystals....they are right around the corner!!
“If it weren’t for government required subsidies,”
A while back I was approached by a wind company. The deal was this: I invest in one or more turbines, or a partial turbine, minimum investment something like $60K.
The turbine was to be run until a certain amount of power was generated, then shut down for maintenance, to be done by a maintenance company.
In California, maintenance on alternative energy came off your taxes at a triple rate, so the deal was not to make power or a profit, it was to make just enough power so that the maintenance shelter would reduce my overall tax load (this was the real “profit”). Generating lots of power would put the owner in a position to pay the heavy corporate profits tax, but you had to generate enough to qualify as a business.
There were other tax incentives like rebates and the like.
I turned this deal down, for a variety of reasons, and was squicked out by the whole concept. Now when I drive through the passes with all the pretty white turbines, and see half of them not spining, I wonder if the same deal is in effect.
“In that case why don’t we use dilithium crystals like on Star Trek.”
Because there are wind turbines, there are offshore platforms, there are electrolysis plants, and there are ways to compress, store, and deliver hydrogen. I work at a lab that gets regular deliveries of H2 because someone runs a furnace with a hydrogen atmosphere. It shows up in a regular truck.
All the pieces of the technology exist, they just have to be put together.
Dilithium does not exist (to be a true Trekkie I should say does not exist YET), so like mining helium-3 on the moon for nonexistent Earthly fusion plants, we’ll relegate that to fantasy. There are people actively working on antimatter, but it is so costly that it will be only for very exotic applications, not for a hybrid car.
“we’ve struggled to create technology that would free us from the whims of nature.”
An interesting point!
If he has some liquid hydrogen on hand, you should go pour yourself a nice big glass, sit back and watch what happens when the stuff is left unattended.
“First of all, I’ve never heard of West Texas being without wind EVER”
Did you know when the wind speed goes up there is a point when wind generators shut down?
They also shut down when they have freezing rain.
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