It's over, for the moment -- Electricity Reliability Council of Texas( ERCOT), the company that manages the Texas utility system, said Monday that it doesn't expect peak electricity demand this week to surpass last week's record levels.
As he did after a sudden freeze stressed the Texas system in February, ERCOT CEO Trip Doggett credited wind power with a critical contribution during last week's power emergency. Doggett said electricity from wind farms recently installed along Texas' Gulf Coast began flowing at just the right time to help meet peak demand in the late afternoons.
With that in mind, some lessons from the week's real-world experience with substantial amounts of installed wind generating capacity on a large utility system:
Adding wind power makes a utility system more reliable, not less.
Balancing electricity supply and demand is a complex task, and utility system operators are used to turning various types of power plants on or off to match demand as it rises and falls throughout the day. Even though wind energy is variable, it varies slowly -- unlike conventional power plants, which can fail instantaneously -- and can be a critical component in times of need. For three straight days in the real world last week, wind made the difference between keeping the lights on and the air conditioners running -- and rolling blackouts.
No power plant runs 100 percent of the time.
Throughout last week's heat wave, as in February's freeze, the Texas utility system was bedeviled by outages of conventional power plants due to extreme weather. According to an Aug. 2 blog article by Elizabeth Souder of the Dallas Morning News, "The high temperatures also caused about 20 power plants to stop working, including at least one coal-fired plant and natural gas plants." Souder noted that a spokesman for ERCOT, "said such outages aren't unusual in the hot summer..." This is fascinating, since the rap on wind is that it's not dependable because "sometimes the wind stops blowing." In the real world, sometimes it also gets too hot or too cold for the supposedly dependable fueled peaking power plants to operate properly.
Geographic dispersal of wind farms makes their electricity production more dependable.
This is something that seems intuitively obvious -- the wind is usually blowing someplace -- and has been predicted by a host of studies. Last week, it became crystal clear, as the Gulf Coast wind farms, which provide some 13 percent of Texas's overall wind generation, accounted for as much as 70 percent of the wind-generated electricity being provided during peak hours. The reason for this is that winds are often low in west Texas, where most of the state's wind farms are located, on very hot days, while ocean breezes blow more strongly.
Generation from offshore and coastal land-based wind matches up well with summer demand peaks.
Again, this is a phenomenon that has been predicted by studies. During a heat wave in the Northeast in July, Cape Wind, the company that hopes to install a large offshore wind farm off Cape Cod in Massachusetts, said its meteorological data showed the project would have been producing at full capacity during peak demand hours. The Texas experience bears that out, with ERCOT CEO Doggett telling the Austin American-Statesman, "We'd love to have more development of coastal wind. And we're hoping their ability to generate during the peak hours may encourage more development in that area."
Heat Wave Causes Exploding Sidewalks and a Blood-Red Reservoir in ...
Greenhouses Suffering Amid Texas Heat Wave « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth
Texas Heat Wave: More Demand Response Needed : Greentech Media
Move Over, Oil, There's Money in Texas Wind - New York Times
First, industrial wind turbines are extremely costly. Although some think that's okay, they'll last, it's doubtful they'll last long enough to justify the price of millions of dollars each, plus installation. (That cost isn't being fully paid by corporations putting them up, but subsidized by government.)
Second, since they're unreliable, if they were used to replace existing power plants, they couldn't provide enough energy unless we surrounded ourselves with them, and even then, what would we do on a calm day? Those old coal, oil, and nuclear power plants are kept running now to pick up the slack when turbines slow down or stop turning.
Fourth, like any other corporate venture, nature and people who live near turbines aren't taken into consideration if it interferes with profits. The environmental studies done to justify erecting turbines have been made by corporations wanting to install them. Should we trust their studies when they tell us turbines don't harm birds, or have any other negative effects on the environment or health of humans? Or, are those studies another instance of letting the fox guard the henhouse? Contrary to what their studies conclude, birds are killed and humans living in their midst suffer from various health problems. (Birds killed at wind farms are removed now by company employees to conceal the real impact on the bird population.)
Fifth, the push to put turbines up all over the place is being made by corporations looking for subsidies to enrich their coffers, as much as by green energy advocates. Will these new energy subsidies just replace oil subsidies taxpayers are paying now? Wouldn't taxpayer money be better spent giving property owners grants to make their properties self-sufficient with solar, geothermal, biomass, and small wind turbines? ... Just think, no brown-outs to worry about ever again at times of extreme temperatures, no downed power lines or outages in storms, no more utility bills to pay ....
We're finally realizing the error of our ways in thinking ethanol was a marvelous replacement for oil, now that we've seen the price of corn increase dramatically, increasing the cost of animal feed for farmers, and the cost of food for humans. All I'm suggesting is that we shouldn't jump on a bandwagon thinking wind turbines are a green answer to our energy needs without making sure we understand everything about them, and appropriate regulations are in place.
When you see T. Boone Pickens spending money on a national advertising campaign to promote natural gas (fracking) and wind turbines to replace oil, it should give any green energy advocate pause. Has the oil man suddenly become an environmentalist, or what's in it for him?
In 1999 California generated 1616 MW of electricity and Texas only had 184 MW but by 2010 California had almost doubled to 3177 MW but Texas was over triple California at 10085 MW!
Reminds me of the story of 2 homes and their environmental impact. President Bush and Vice President Gore.
I hate to point this out But renewable energy subsidies increased about 3.5 times under President Bush! I wonder how much they increased under President Obama? Oil Subsidies were basically flat from 1999-2007 under President Bush at about $2 billion. I wonder how much it's gone up under President Obama?
http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/execsum.pdf
It seems in the Environmental Political landscape what's up is down and what's down is up!
Just an observation.
Big Wind is just Big Energy - they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Local, democratically owned solutions like passive heating/cooling, rooftop PV, and efficiency measures are the only future worth living. When will we stop bowing down to Big Energy and start demanding decentralized, reliable, affordable clean solutions?
http://www.honeywellstore.com/store/images/pdf/Honeywell-Wind-Turbine-System.pdf
http://windtronics.adobeconnect.com/honeywellwindturbineintroductionforowners/
Reduce grid stress 20% reduce EMF
EMF causes cancer and diabetes!!
http://www.electricsaver1200.com/
Smart Meter EMF Pollution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci5GGqEPecE
I also like that Texas is forced to square their politics with green energy.
Free fuel spinning turbines beats paying for it every time.
... instead of their Trillion Dollar Eco-Disaster!!
Solar is clean safe and RISK Free...
Just say N☢ to More Nuclear!
That may well have been helpful in this extreme situation, but it underscores the inefficiency of wind in that so much has to be built to get (by chance) so little.
There are plenty of useful places where the wind rarely slows down.