Kevin Williamson makes a crucial point succinctly: “It’s a complex issue, but when 7 percent of your expected power represents 40 percent of your lost power, that is a significant fact.”
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Let’s see if this boy understands the complexity.
So 93% of the power had massive failures due to poor preparation and protection of its fossil fuel generating capability. (BTW, failures were in coal and NG.)
That would make the 7% a much higher percentage of the power that was still available. Seems simple enough.
So without that help from windmills that were still cranking out watts, things would be worse.
I am confused about the logic, but not about the BS.
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RE: “That would make the 7% a much higher percentage of the power that was still available.”
No wonder you’re confused. 7% is the same percentage no matter what it is a percentage of.
Windmills represented 7% of the expected power from all sources, but 40% of the power lost due to failure. That means 40% of the failed systems were windmills.
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One of us makes no sense. If wind is but 7% of the total input, it cannot be responsible for 40% of the loss. Wind didn’t really fail at all.
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RE: “If wind is but 7% of the total input, it cannot be responsible for 40% of the loss”
Yes, it can.
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No. Except in the math of spin.
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Here’s the math. Assume total inputs = 100 and total loss = 18.
7% of total inputs = 7
40% of total loss = 7.2 = 7 (rounded)
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Your math is making the assumption that the windmills quit totally so the 7% was 40% of the loss.
But 7% is what was still up and running for the most part. I believe that 10% is as much as can be expected in cold weather.
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RE: “Your math is making the assumption that the windmills quit totally so the 7% was 40% of the loss.”
No. My math shows that the same quantity of absolute units can be 7% of one number and 40% of a different number.
RE: “But 7% is what was still up and running for the most part.”
That’s 7% of what? It is 7% of total inputs from all sources were windmills. But 40% of failures were windmills. You can’t blame the whole failure on non-renewable sources only, because their percentage was only 60%.
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Let’s assume all the windmills froze. The rest of the generation should have been 93%, probably enough to avert this catastrophe.
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“BTW, failures were in coal and NG.”
Not just coal and NG failed, a nuclear plant went offline because they had not acquired the equipment needed to keep the cooling water systems from freezing.
The bottom line is that these for-profit utilities made huge bets against severe cold weather. And they lost. And people died.
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Yes but…AOC was to blame. That is crucial.
For some reason.
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Typical dishonest NR spin.
Texas utilities decided against investing in the cold weather kits for their wind turbines – an option offered by the manufacturers. They knew that in severe cold weather they would lose wind powered capacity. That was a management decision and not an inherent feature of wind turbines. So, in their severe weather plan they relied on getting only 7% of their power from wind turbines. Instead of the normal 20%+. In the event, they got more power than planned from wind turbines. That is a success. Not a failure.
The real cause of the disaster was the decision made years ago to isolate Texas from the national grid in order to reduce the role of the Federal Power Commission. Greed and stupid pride kill yet again.
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Dishonest spin by NR?? Surely you jest…
JTR will scour the ether to find ANYTHING that supports the alt reality he ascribes to.
Emblematic of the years of dis-information fed to the easily led. I sincerely hope the increasing emphasis on actual facts help the cult recover.
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Williamson links to the sources for his numbers. Can you find an error?
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There is no need to look for an error in the numbers. The numbers are meaningless.
Utility management decided to increase profits by skipping the cold weather kits offered by the manufacturers. The fact that a percentage of the turbines were not functional in the severe cold was a “feature,” not a bug. In their severe weather planning they accounted for this “feature” and expected that the contribution from wind would be down from the usual 20% to around 7%. That is about the only thing they got right. Wind turbines performed as planned. It was the fossil fuel parts of the system that failed.
And then there is the now known to be fatal decision to isolate the Texas power grid from the rest of the country. THAT is the real problem. And cannot be spun away with brain dead attacks on wind turbines.
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RE: “Wind turbines performed as planned. It was the fossil fuel parts of the system that failed.”
False. 40% of of the lost power was lost from renewable sources that failed; 60% was lost from thermal sources that failed. You can do the math yourself based on Williamson’s source.
The REAL problem is that Texas invested in intermittent wind power in the first place without maintaining its investment in thermal power.
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False?
Can you not read and understand plain English? Are you so encrusted with doctrinaire opposition to renewable energy that you can no longer think straight? Wind power performed as planned. Fossil energy failed miserably. The failures were predictable and predicted. It happened on a less tragic scale in 2011 but nothing changed. This is not hard to understand.
Here try again and read carefully. Utility management chose not to invest in cold kits for their wind turbines. They knew this meant that many would be offline in what they thought was the unlikely event of severely cold weather. That is why their severe weather plan was based on reduced output from those turbines. When the severe weather hit the turbines produced 7% of the overall power needs AS PLANNED.
Again, the real problem was the Texas political attitude towards the rest of the country. Other states with power issues are able to import electricity from other states until they get things straightened out. Not Texas.
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RE: “When the severe weather hit the turbines produced 7% of the overall power needs AS PLANNED.”
You make an irrelevant point. It doesn’t matter that base load supply from renewables went from 20% to 7% during the storm. What matters is that 40% of the storm-period supply loss was from renewables. By any reasonable standard of reliability engineering, allowing that to happen was stupid.
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“By any reasonable standard of reliability engineering, allowing that to happen was stupid.”
I will not argue with you there. BUT that is what utility management decided to do. Even with the outages caused by cold in 2011, they continued to deploy wind turbines without the available systems for cold weather operation.
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Do you understand the difference base load and peak or severe weather load?
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Do YOU understand that ERCOT is complicit in the failures throughout the system to protect against severe weather events when they were told 10 years ago they need to take care of it?
The real load issue is the big bag of longhorn crap getting tossed around by anti-alternative energy bigots.
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https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/texas-power-grid-failures/
Forget the wind turbines. They were doing their part. It is all the other sources, plus no grid and no regulatory pressure to be ready.
Texas has had 10 years to avoid a power failure like in 2011.
Base, peak or severe weather…Texas failed in all three. No excuses.
But Republican spin is trying so hard to deflect the blame. Probably enough spin to generate all the electricity they’d ever need if they quit bitching about green and try to keep people alive.
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RE: “Forget the wind turbines. They were doing their part. It is all the other sources, plus no grid and no regulatory pressure to be ready.”
You should study your own source carefully. It is the same article Kevin Willimanson references. Here’s the important quote: “45 gigawatts total were offline, with 28 gigawats from thermal sources and 18 gigawatts from renewable sources, ERCOT officials said.”
18 of 45 gigawatts that went offline were from renewable sources. That equals 40%.
You are trying to make windmills blameless, but your own source refutes you.
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This is really not that hard. Come on! You can get it.
The wind turbines being offline was planned and expected because these for-profit utilities decided to gamble and not fit them out for cold weather. The failures of the thermal parts of the system were not planned or expected but were the direct result of short-sighted management which failed to invest adequately in winterizing their systems.
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…”no regulatory pressure to be ready.”
Wait. You mean regulations could have prevented some of this from happening? Don’t tell Don. His head will explode.
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“Do you understand the difference base load and peak or severe weather load?”
Yes.
Do you understand that opinions are best supported with actual facts and not made up bullshit?
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Williamson’s numbers are actual facts. Furthermore, they support Dr. Tabor’s point about baseload.
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They many be actual facts. But when facts are spun to feed a predetermined opinion, it is idiotc.
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