[edbob]

I wouldn't frame the blackouts as a "windmill problem" as they're primarily a "winterization problem", but having so much capacity invested in unreliable wind generation was a very significant contributor to the blackouts that should not be ignored. ERCOT is a world leader in wind production, and that was pretty punishing when its 25GW of wind capacity was producing 0. We invested billions into a generation source that at one point produced 0 and eventually "exceeded projections" by producing slightly more than 0. We could have invested those billions in basically any other source and had significantly more electricity available. Winterization would have helped somewhat with less turbines freezing, but it doesn't help at all when the wind stops blowing.

[Jedd]

I see you've made many sweeping comments in this thread, some of which I can't confirm the veracity of.

> ... but having so much capacity invested in unreliable wind generation was a very significant contributor to the blackouts that should not be ignored.

Has that grid suffered lots of blackouts at times other than big freezes?

If it hasn't, then that would suggest that the designers / operators of the grid factored in the unreliability of wind, and have the baseload well covered by gas, nuclear, etc.

> ERCOT is a world leader in wind production, and that was pretty punishing when its 25GW of wind capacity was producing 0.

And yet:

"About half of the state’s wind capacity was offline Sunday because of turbines that had frozen in west Texas, according to the Austin American-Statesman, but high winds from the winter storm were spinning coastal turbines faster and generating more power to offset those losses." [1]

> Winterization would have helped somewhat with less turbines freezing, but it doesn't help at all when the wind stops blowing.

'fewer'

I'm not sure where you're getting information that the wind stopped blowing, or why that's a reason to not use wind turbines as part of an overall power generation strategy, or indeed why you seem to be surprised that if ECOT prepared wind turbines, as well as gas & nuclear (which both lost a fair chunk of capacity) then the outcome wouldn't have been so appalling.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/17/fac...

[edbob]

You're reading a lot into my comments. You seem to think that I'm against using wind power, which is absolutely not true, as I've commented in the past. I'm against the current narrative's misinformation which cherry-picks stats to push a political agenda. I would like ERCOT to continue to "use wind turbines as part of an overall power generation strategy", but in order to do this intelligently it is necessary to understand the strengths and weaknesses of different generation sources. The fashionable anti-nuclear, pro-wind propaganda is not helping anyone to understand reality.

All of my information about the output of different sources comes from personally digging through ERCOT's minutely detailed reports[0]. I haven't seen a nice, neat fact-checking propaganda piece that deals with the relevant data, but I haven't really searched that hard because all the data is right there, straight from the source.

The "Fuel Mix Report" lists the output of each generation type in 15 minute intervals[1]. There are over 25000 GW of wind capacity, so we would expect to see a maximum of a bit less than 6250 GWh of wind output in the best 15 minute periods ("a bit less" is taking into account that we don't expect 100% output even in the best circumstances). The data matches this, as we see peaks reaching about 5600 GWh. The values are conveniently totaled for each day, and with a theoretical ceiling of 600,000 GWh capacity per day we see that the most actually produced on any day in Jan or Feb 2021 was 458,000 GWh on January 6th, 76% of capacity.

If we look at February 15, 16, and 17, wind output was 225,000 GWh for all three days combined, or a whopping 12.5% of capacity. This matches the pitiful performance that I was seeing in real time in ERCOT's feed.

None of the 15 minute periods report 0 GWh, the lowest being 149 GWh on Feb 15th. So either the granularity is not fine enough or I was just wrong to say that wind dropped to zero, and I would like to revise my position to say that wind output dropped to 2% of capacity.

Hopefully you can understand how I can both support intelligent use of wind power while being dismayed by fact-checking pieces that turn "only 25%" of our capacity being 87.5% offline into vague terms like "exceeded projections" and "wind wasn't a problem", as if 15,000-20,000 GW of capacity being offline was not a significant factor. (87.5% of 25,000 GW is 21,875 GW, but again I am not expecting wind to be able to produce at 100%).

> indeed why you seem to be surprised that if ECOT prepared wind turbines, as well as gas & nuclear (which both lost a fair chunk of capacity) then the outcome wouldn't have been so appalling.

This comes off like you're just making things up to troll me. I've specifically mentioned winterization many times. It's also very telling that, like the fact-checkers, you have to stick to vague terms like "lost a fair chunk of capacity" without getting into the actual numbers which would show how massive that disparity really is.

[0] http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/generation [1] http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/181766/IntGenbyFuel20...

[Jedd]

Well, you conceded that it's primarily a winterisation problem, but then immediately say:

> ... but having so much capacity invested in unreliable wind generation was a very significant contributor to the blackouts that should not be ignored.

The word 'unreliable' is ambiguous here -- clearly world+dog understands that power generated by wind is highly variable, and ERCOT (as for any ISO, and similar orgs in other countries) maintains and improves their forecasts around this variability.

This is factored into the overall grid provisioning and maintenance of power to consumers. It's why I asked about the effect of this variability outside of major cold events. Evidently not so much?

So, using the word 'unreliable' in a way that sounds like wind turbines can't be trusted seems disingenuous, since there's no surprises with the way they operate, and the variability in the power they can generate.

Your comment that billions should have been invested in anything except wind, and this would have guaranteed significantly more electricity available - isn't supported by the facts. Nuclear, gas, and coal all failed in various but predictable ways.

So you're kind of conceding that winterisation would have helped, but only in the context of fewer wind turbines being taken out. The fact coal, gas, and nuclear failed, because they hadn't been properly protected against cold weather, you seem to be discounting.

I haven't stared at the ERCOT numbers, and am disinclined to do so -- the fact that much of the state was without power for several days, and early reports suggested the grid was some minutes away from catastrophic cascading failure, suggests to me that concise numbers aren't the important thing here.

What's clear is that despite the 2011 heads-up, and the audit two years ago that highlighted the continued lack of preparedness, it was way more than the predictable freezing of some wind turbines. The history and political motivation for this highly isolated ISO further highlights the problems of poor planning and poor regulation. Were they not so intentionally disconnected, power could have easily been sourced from elsewhere in the country.

I did find an interesting 'actual number' that their lack of maintenance for their wind turbines was a major contributory factor:

"Though frozen wind turbines were a contributing factor, wind shutdowns accounted for less than 13% of the outages, Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations for ERCOT, told Bloomberg." [0]

Further in that article:

"According to a report from ERCOT, solar accounts for only 3.8% of the state's power capacity throughout the year. Wind energy accounts for 10% of Texas's winter energy capacity and throughout the entire year it is able to provide 24.8%, the second-largest source of energy in the state under natural gas, which accounts for 51%."

Which suggests your 25% figure is misleading, as that's a yearly average - it's 10% (about the same as nuclear) during that time of year.

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/19/politics/texas-energy-out...

[edbob]

> I haven't stared at the ERCOT numbers, and am disinclined to do so -- the fact that much of the state was without power for several days, and early reports suggested the grid was some minutes away from catastrophic cascading failure, suggests to me that concise numbers aren't the important thing here.

I gave references to the exact locations which would take at most a minute or two to find. If we're just going off journalists' opinion pieces, then we're not ever going to get any further than the cherry-picked stats that they choose to provide. If you don't think my numbers are worth taking into account because they come from the source data and not someone's propaganda, then I don't know what to tell you. You're happy enough to cite numbers when they fit into your argument.

> This is factored into the overall grid provisioning and maintenance of power to consumers. It's why I asked about the effect of this variability outside of major cold events. Evidently not so much?

The recent events indicate precisely that this planning had some serious flaws. We cannot make that assumption. Although you have pointed out that wind power normally varies between 10% and 25% of the supply, so the normal variability is apparently very large.

> Were they not so intentionally disconnected, power could have easily been sourced from elsewhere in the country.

The adjacent regions also suffered rolling blackouts. There was a little power to source, but not much. This argument is not supported by the "concise numbers".

Re my personal opinion on wind use: My original position was that wind can be very good despite some issues, but as I've gotten into these discussions and dug through the data, I see significant reasons that wind might be a bad fit for Texas without some major improvements beyond just winterization. I'm open to those improvements but I don't know what they could be, so my opinions here are not really made up yet.

I'm not really interested in advancing any particular policy prescription. I'm mostly pushing back against the widespread misinformation (especially avoidance of actual numbers in favor of vague terms) around this topic, in order to give some space for a real discussion. I'm not trying to show that so much wind generation is a problem, I'm trying to show that it could be a problem and that possibility needs to be accounted for. Wind shouldn't be assumed to have "exceeded projections" because some partisan "fact-checker" said so without specifying how absurdly low those 24-hour projections were. That's why I've repeatedly said that winterization could improve the situation, but I also point out the flaws in thinking that winterization will magically solve all the issues, since wind is so variable even without any freezing.

[Jedd]

You've thrown lots of numbers around, while claiming other people are wrong and/or incautious:

> I'm against the current narrative's misinformation which cherry-picks stats to push a political agenda.

and

> If we're just going off journalists' opinion pieces, then we're not ever going to get any further than the cherry-picked stats that they choose to provide. If you don't think my numbers are worth taking into account because they come from the source data and not someone's propaganda, then I don't know what to tell you. You're happy enough to cite numbers when they fit into your argument.

However, all your figures push the narrative that wind is / should be 25% of the total state capacity all the time:

> There are over 25000 GW of wind capacity, so we would expect to see a maximum of a bit less than 6250 GWh of wind output in the best 15 minute periods ...

and

> ... being dismayed by fact-checking pieces that turn "only 25%" of our capacity being 87.5%

Despite, as I quoted earlier:

"Wind energy accounts for 10% of Texas's winter energy capacity and throughout the entire year it is able to provide 24.8%"

So your 25% ratio, and all the GwH figures you keep extrapolating from that, are not what ERCOT projects or expects to obtain in winter. (EDIT: Indeed, this implies the average for the whole of winter is 10%, with an understanding it will dip well below that figure through those months.)

Are you cherry-picking yearly average figures and inappropriately applying them here to push a narrative?

[edbob]

> Are you cherry-picking yearly average figures and inappropriately applying them here to push a narrative?

I am neither cherry-picking nor using yearly average figures. The one yearly figure of "over 25000 GW" is for ERCOT's installed wind capacity, which is consistent year-round apart from a small growth as new capacity comes online. My other figures are for specific dates or months, the dates being when black outs were happening.

As for why wind's low output compared to capacity matters so much, I am dealing with the inescapable facts of the Texas climate and how it relates to the energy market. The capacity in Texas is driven by summer-time demand. Yet, very rarely, there are winters in which the demand can briefly exceed summer-time capacity. It's obvious that the current market is unable to consistently meet the demand in these rare winter events.

The root problem is having capacity which can perform in summer but not in winter, whether due to not being winterized, being down for maintenance, or any other reason. Focusing solely on winterization is being used as a diversion from the problem that Texans actually care about, which is simply having power in their homes during extreme winters.

By refusing to look at the data, you are missing the fact that wind actually does produce quite a lot of power on many winter days. In fact, ERCOT's all-time record for wind production was set in February 2018. But on some winter days, wind produces very little. It should be obvious that wind significantly reduces the average profits for other generation sources in winter, and thus has a negative effect on the market for more reliable generation capacity. Wind's high variability does contribute to a lack of output during extreme weather.

The "wind performed excellently" side is just ignoring all of this, but it's all highly relevant and should be part of the discussion. I am not saying that it should lead to a "wind is bad" conclusion in the final analysis. I am saying that there are significant problems with wind generation that should be part of the analysis, not swept under the rug. Saying "just winterize" is extremely hand-wavey, as it does not account for how the high costs of winterization can result in less installed capacity, and it completely fails to consider other issues like certain generation sources being highly inconsistent even when there is no freezing. Saying "all sources had problems" is a way to avoid recognizing that nuclear dramatically outperformed every other generation source even without winterizing. Performing at 75% of capacity is completely different from performing at 12.5%.

There are some more detailed analyses in the articles at [0] and [1]. [0] deals with the claim that deregulation was the culprit, showing that the relevant Texan regulations are actually more strict and better-enforced than the national regulations (due to previous freezing issues), while other national regulations do apply to Texas (like some dealing with gas). [1] goes into detail on how capacity planning fell short, by someone who was actually responsible for capacity planning in a region of ERCOT. The main point is that Texas has no capacity market, and this is what has allowed it to become a world leader in wind generation but has led to failures in having enough capacity available. "When capacity value is rewarded, this makes the economics of renewables much less competitive. Texas has stacked the deck to make wind and solar more competitive than they could be in a system that better recognizes the value of dependable resources which can supply capacity benefits. An energy only market helps accomplish the goal of making wind and solar more competitive. Except capacity value is a real value. Ignoring that, as Texas did, comes with real perils." "Incentives and responsibility need to be paired. Doing a post-mortem on the Texas situation ignoring incentives and responsibility is inappropriate and incomplete."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26186645 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26195050

With all this taken into account, I think that I favor a system of primarily nuclear power providing baseload needs (with some basic winterization please), and a mixture of other sources that can economically and consistently meet variable demand. This leaves wind a solid place where it is economically efficient, as in some windy regions of Texas. I haven't completely made up my mind though.