Unreliables causing blackouts?! ‘Nearly half of Texas installed wind power generation capacity has

[rangerrebew]

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Unreliables causing blackouts?! ‘Nearly half of Texas installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines’

By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotFebruary 15, 2021 11:45 AM

https://www.climatedepot.com/2021/02/15/unreliables-causing-blackouts-nearly-half-of-texas-installed-wind-power-generation-capacity-has-been-offline-because-of-frozen-wind-turbines/

[thackney]

It is not just the wind turbine.  75% of all Texas generation has been impacted in some manner.

[catfish1957]

Been away from the fray for awhile, but there seemed to be a lot of refinery cogen capacity that never came to fruition (built) due to environmenalist and utilites lobby's.   Regrets now?

Of course bad freezes are not the best of times for refineries either.

[Fishrrman]

thackney wrote:
"75% of all Texas generation has been impacted in some manner."

How many of those are old-style coal-fired plants?

[Sled Dog]

As we've been saying, windmills and solar panels need a 100% back-up capacity running and ready to be placed on-line at all times.

A few good nuclear power plants will do the job.   We can store the waste on the streets of San Fransissyco, just like the homeless do.

Or, it being Texas, they can fire their power plants with natural gas and petroleum products.   

Heck, it's Texas, they could make it a condition to receive welfare for the recipients to go out in to the pastures and collect the cow pies, so long as those people don't eat the chocolate looking ones.   

[thackney]

thackney wrote:
"75% of all Texas generation has been impacted in some manner."

How many of those are old-style coal-fired plants?

Natural gas-fired power plants supplied more than half of the state's electricity net generation in 2019. About 5,000 megawatts of Texas coal-fired generating capacity have been retired since 2016. As a result, coal-fired power plants supplied less than one-fifth of state generation in 2019, down from about one-third as recently as 2014.

https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=TX

[Fishrrman]

thackney wrote:
"About 5,000 megawatts of Texas coal-fired generating capacity have been retired since 2016. As a result, coal-fired power plants supplied less than one-fifth of state generation in 2019, down from about one-third as recently as 2014."

Yes, ok.

But my original question was not about how many coal-fired plants are still in operation.

It was about how many of them have had normal operations impacted by the current cold snap, vis-a-vis other types of generating plants?

[thackney]

thackney wrote:
"About 5,000 megawatts of Texas coal-fired generating capacity have been retired since 2016. As a result, coal-fired power plants supplied less than one-fifth of state generation in 2019, down from about one-third as recently as 2014."

Yes, ok.

But my original question was not about how many coal-fired plants are still in operation.

It was about how many of them have had normal operations impacted by the current cold snap, vis-a-vis other types of generating plants?

I have not found the specific data yet.  But this so far.  It looks like Natural Gas was the biggest problem.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/feb/16/natural-gas-not-wind-turbines-main-driver-texas-po/

...The state’s grid operator said Feb. 15 that about 34 gigawatts of power were offline. But of that, about 4 gigawatts was due to problems with wind turbines. The rest came mainly from the state’s primary sources, natural gas and coal.

Dan Woodfin, a senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told Bloomberg that frozen gauges and instruments at natural gas, coal and nuclear plants cut into operations. Natural gas-fired plants also had to deal with low gas pressure in their supply lines....

[dfwgator]

This is a disgrace, it should never happen in Texas with all of our energy resources.  People need to be flogged for this.