Wind turbines shut down when needed most..

[Torrid]

So a quick search shows electricity in TX is on average $0.1136/kwh and Wisconsin is $0.1428. So do you think the average Texan would be willing to spend 25.7% more all the time on electricity so the power doesn't go out once every 8 to 14 years?

My guess is they would not.

People like to complain, but they don't like to pay.

I didn’t think of that. I can’t recall a single outage here in extreme cold and I’ve been here 7 years. Not a ton of solar, but there’s some and a huge amount of wind power. Coal is still used in a somewhat large amount. I know that there is different levels of winterizing windmills, but I’m assuming they planned ahead in this case.

 

[Rmay635703]

So a quick search shows electricity in TX is on average $0.1136/kwh and Wisconsin is $0.1428. So do you think the average Texan would be willing to spend 25.7% more all the time on electricity so the power doesn't go out once every 8 to 14 years?

My guess is they would not.

People like to complain, but they don't like to pay.

Yeah whatever I pay 11.2 cents. (Was 9 cents up to 3 years ago)

Our power was actually identical or slightly cheaper compared to Texas for 50 years, the very recent rise in prices has nothing to do with the standard and everything to do with bad regulatory body decisions (mandatory profits driving us to prematurely pay for decommissioning dozens of hydro dams and most of our nuclear)

The electric company makes money building unnecessary production and gets paid to decommission cheap power sources.

Our government eliminated our accountability board and obvious and logical outcomes are occurring

 

[OVERKILL]

That’s true. I suppose that wind turbines aren’t all that useful at either temperature extreme. Solar would be useful on those hot summer days.

Solar can do a good job of displacing daytime gas peaking during the summer. Its contribution in the winter is much less, but still, if it's cheap, that's a worthwhile endeavour. Adding a few hours of storage, providing it is cost effective, can displace even more gas peaker capacity.

Wind tends to displace gas when demand is low to moderate, so if you are only running gas for peaking capacity in an otherwise clean (nuclear/hydro) grid, you aren't really displacing much of anything other than other clean sources, which drives up costs because you are now displacing kWh at other clean plants that still have O&M costs, which they now have to spread over fewer kWh while you also pay for the wind kWh.

 

[SC Maintenance]

Yeah whatever I pay 11.2 cents. (Was 9 cents up to 3 years ago)

Our power was actually identical or slightly cheaper compared to Texas for 50 years, the very recent rise in prices has nothing to do with the standard and everything to do with bad regulatory body decisions (mandatory profits driving us to prematurely pay for decommissioning dozens of hydro dams and most of our nuclear)

The electric company makes money building unnecessary production and gets paid to decommission cheap power sources.

Our government eliminated our accountability board and obvious and logical outcomes are occurring

I am going by state averages.

EIA also says you still get a fair amount of electricity from coal. Coal is very cheap right now. If you have functioning coal plants thats a cheap way to make electricity, until those plants are decommissioned. Then we shall see.

Anyway, you can believe whatever you want. I am sure Texans could build a grid that could work in -40F, if they wanted to spend the money.

 

[4WD]

So a quick search shows electricity in TX is on average $0.1136/kwh and Wisconsin is $0.1428. So do you think the average Texan would be willing to spend 25.7% more all the time on electricity so the power doesn't go out once every 8 to 14 years?

My guess is they would not.

People like to complain, but they don't like to pay.

Not me - I pay less than that average - lived in this home since 1996 with barely a half day total with all the short outages that came from actual damage - not a grid outage …
on top of that - have natural gas - several multi fuel gens - portable AC’s - battery packs - and survival food …
(left out shotgun, rifle, and 4WD)

 

[carviewsonic]

Solar can do a good job of displacing daytime gas peaking during the summer. Its contribution in the winter is much less, but still, if it's cheap, that's a worthwhile endeavour. Adding a few hours of storage, providing it is cost effective, can displace even more gas peaker capacity.

Wind tends to displace gas when demand is low to moderate, so if you are only running gas for peaking capacity in an otherwise clean (nuclear/hydro) grid, you aren't really displacing much of anything other than other clean sources, which drives up costs because you are now displacing kWh at other clean plants that still have O&M costs, which they now have to spread over fewer kWh while you also pay for the wind kWh.

May be unfounded, but my fear as a consumer is that investment which should be going into gas and coal plants here in Alberta to meet peak demand isn’t happening as it should.
Instead, wind and solar (with their shortcomings) are being used to increase capacity.

 

[SC Maintenance]

Not me - I pay less than that average - lived in this home since 1996 with barely a half day total with all the short outages that came from actual damage - not a grid outage …
on top of that - have natural gas - several multi fuel gens - portable AC’s - battery packs - and survival food …
(left out shotgun, rifle, and 4WD)

"I got a shotgun a rifle and a 4wd and a country boy can survive."

 

[dnewton3]

The wind maps show there are a few places in the South East part of Alberta that do in fact look pretty good for wind energy.

There are always going to be extreme conditions that cause failure of infrastructure. No one has the money to build to these cases. Texas is the perfect Example. How many times in a lifetime are you likely to see those conditions? Here on the South Carolina Coast a couple times a decade a hurricane comes along and blows down our power poles. There is an effort to burry the power lines - my neighborhood is all underground but its new. The power coming to the neighborhood is above ground, so it still goes out. Individuals need to plan ahead and prepare for themselves, and those that can not are urged to either leave or go to a shelter where someone will take care of them. I assume Alberta is the same?

https://www.nrel.gov/gis/assets/images/wtk-100-north-america-50-nm-01.jpg

That's a fair rebuttal.

I would counter with this ...
If you can stockpile coal at the point of use, then you can also add some NG storage tanks and stockpile NG as the point of use as well.
While it may not be currently in play, some simple planning can mitigate this issue.

Your point is valid, but it's easily overcome.
My point was that NG has very few "uber cold" problems in actual use. Coal systems have problems with moisture freezing up and causing conveyor belt issues, blower chute issues, etc. NG has none of these issues.

 

[OVERKILL]

May be unfounded, but my fear as a consumer is that investment which should be going into gas and coal plants here in Alberta to meet peak demand isn’t happening as it should.
Instead, wind and solar (with their shortcomings) are being used to increase capacity.

It's a legit concern for sure. If these assets are run less, they make less money unless the market rate goes up enough to compensate. If it doesn't, then that spending on O&M suffers.

 

[dnewton3]

Nuclear has very few downsides and a lot of upsides. Energy dense, reliable, abundant, ambient temp resistant, etc ...

I wish we'd get over our phobia of nukes and commit.

 

[IndyIan]

Nuclear has very few downsides and a lot of upsides. Energy dense, reliable, abundant, ambient temp resistant, etc ...

I wish we'd get over our phobia of nukes and commit.

The only downside is that they are expensive to build and maintain and secure, and don't scale down well ATM. Alberta and Saskatchewan have 5.3M people spread over an area about as big as Texas, so maybe 2 nuclear plants would be needed, but building a grid from 2 main points for an area that big I think would be prohibitively expensive?
A high voltage DC line can be $2-3M per mile, or you chose to have higher transmission loses?.

 

[dubber09]

Not designed for the weather of intended use area. They sure needed to involve airspace or military equipment engineers as planes and military equipment get designed for low temps operations.

 

[OVERKILL]

The only downside is that they are expensive to build and maintain and secure, and don't scale down well ATM.

Build? Yes. Maintain and secure? Not so much. Darlington OPEX is around $0.036/kWh all-in, including all staffing (including security), maintenance and fuel. This does not include refurbishment however.

Smallest CANDU is of course the EC6 at 725MW, not "small", but would work fine for Alberta, as they were originally looking at 1,200MWe units at Peace River.

Alberta and Saskatchewan have 5.3M people spread over an area about as big as Texas, so maybe 2 nuclear plants would be needed, but building a grid from 2 main points for an area that big I think would be prohibitively expensive?
A high voltage DC line can be $2-3M per mile, or you chose to have higher transmission loses?.

I mean, Quebec did it? Most of their power comes from the James Bay Project and Churchill Falls, both of which are much more remote than any nuke would be in Alberta or Saskatchewan.

 

[Shannow]

The only downside is that they are expensive to build and maintain and secure, and don't scale down well ATM. Alberta and Saskatchewan have 5.3M people spread over an area about as big as Texas, so maybe 2 nuclear plants would be needed, but building a grid from 2 main points for an area that big I think would be prohibitively expensive?
A high voltage DC line can be $2-3M per mile, or you chose to have higher transmission loses?.

Australia is building 6,500 miles of HV network to connet renewables, that operate 20-30% of the time to population centres.

(My mind boggles with what strange effects these long distance lines are going to have when sitting there unloaded for power factor and voltage.)

 

[walterjay]

The lions share of electricity in my area is from nuclear generation. I am glad that it is. Very reliable.

 

[oil pan 4]

This is a design spec issue, not a fault of "green energy".

This is 100% the fault of "green energy".
To say otherwise is simply gaslighting.

 

[4WD]

It was beyond that with failure to winterizing both their natural gas infrastructure and the power plants that also used it. While wind was certainly a player it wasn't the reason they went totally dark.

And even a nuke plant - the difference is many of those were dealt with by said winterization … (and protocol)

But as O/K points out - renew’s were not going to give you much in those weather conditions to start with - and always need a crutch …

Massive battery banks are not the answer bcs they rob minerals needed for EV - that HAS to use a battery …

 

[oil pan 4]

The only downside is that they are expensive to build and maintain and secure, and don't scale down well ATM. Alberta and Saskatchewan have 5.3M people spread over an area about as big as Texas, so maybe 2 nuclear plants would be needed, but building a grid from 2 main points for an area that big I think would be prohibitively expensive?
A high voltage DC line can be $2-3M per mile, or you chose to have higher transmission loses?.

I like how nuclear power is the only thing that's too expensive when it comes to saving the world.
High resource use wind and solar with unpredictable intermittent output, fine.
Spending billions of dollars reengineering and lavishly expanding the power grid to deal with diffuse intermittent power sources, also fine.
Spending other people's money for some people to install heatpumps and buy electric cars, helping to shiftpeak load to the middle of the night, great idea.
Grid batteries that waste power, have to double the price of throughput power to break even, sure one dumb idea usually leads to another.
Nuclear would have been cheaper.

 

[4WD]

Actually that was not an issue!
TX plants bcs. weakened regulation did not have appropriate amount of coolant! That is number one. Number two was that TX is separate grid. It could not borrow energy from other states, like let’s say Oklahoma did during same time.
Three, temperature in TX was not that bad for wind to generate power. It was bad because it WAS IN TEXAS. Which means less insulation in houses, pipes not buried deep enough and most importantly, again, nuclear power plants unable to operate bcs. coolant issues. Wind and solar were actually working perfectly fine.
That is why TX went 300% of usage for solar panels so that individual homes “pitch in,” which was reason why they didn’t have blackouts this summer during heatwave.
When it comes to solar energy, TX is MUCH more liberal than progressive Colorado. They allow 300% installation of your usage while my utilities allow only 120%.

So yeah, voting does matter.

What coolant ?
You don’t put water pipe under slabs in much of Texas - we have too much soil movement … then you totally destroy the slab/home with parted pipe you didn’t know was leaking. Sheetrock is cheap - my pipe is right above sheet rock but under R30 and 3/4” tech shield decking …
This map shows the northern shared grid that includes OK - this is historically the coldest part of Texas. I’m coastal - kept power.

Yes, Texas is a mix of power sources - they are commissioning a new wind farm 3 miles from me now …

 

[demarpaint]

It is true that many forms of energy generation must make adjustments to produce power in extreme low temps. However, there's a difference between "making adjustments" (such as using thinner greases, adding heaters, etc) and just "shutting down".

In this story, there's no mitigation to the issue once it drops below -30C, the way I understand the issue. The blades and tower structure get so brittle that continued use risks destruction from vibratory effects. Hence, the system is flat out useless past a certain point of being too cold.

With other forms of power generation (i.e. coal and gas), they may have to operate at a reduced level, but they are not just "shut down" at temp "-X". Gas, in particular, does really well because there are no conveyor belts to freeze, blower chutes to clog, etc. as is the case with coal. About the only thing you have to worry about with gas fired power generation is moisture condensation in the extreme low temps, and some heaters and good condensate traps can deal with that.

Good points, much like tools have certain purposes and should be used for those purposes. Take a hammer, it can be used to install and remove screws. That doesn't mean it should be used for that. Simply put when you know there is an area that can freeze, don't use a wind turbine, or if you know any area can get enough snow to render solar panels useless, don't install a solar farm, unless you're going to pay a crew to keep them clean in a storm, even then I'd pass. In areas where cold and snow are not a problem, go for it.