Arguments
How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
Posted on 9 September 2024 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
In February 2021, several severe storms swept across the United States, culminating with one that the Weather Channel unofficially named Winter Storm Uri. In Texas, Uri knocked out power to over 4.5 million homes and 10 million people. Hundreds of Texans died as a result, and the storm is estimated to have cost the state $130 billion.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, quickly sought to blame the crisis on renewable energy. While the storm and blackouts were still ongoing, Abbott told Sean Hannity of Fox News, “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America … fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make sure we will be able to heat our homes in the wintertime and cool our homes in the summertime.”
Subsequent investigations into the causes of the Texas blackouts concluded that Gov. Abbott was wrong. Although wind energy underperformed in the cold temperatures, so did gas and coal power plants. But incidents like these raise the question: Will clean energy and climate policies make communities more vulnerable to dangerous power outages?
The answer, as other states have demonstrated, is no – with sufficient planning and preparation, that is.
What caused the deadly Texas blackouts?
No one type of energy was to blame for the tragic blackouts in Texas. All types of electricity generation facilities experienced failure, according to an analysis of the event by the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute.
“Natural gas, coal, and nuclear were expected to serve as the firm baseload power that could be relied upon,” the report concluded. “However, that proved not to be the case, particularly for gas-powered electricity, though all fuel sources faced some challenges from the winter weather.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, similarly concluded that natural gas power plants were responsible for the majority of Texas’ power outages.
Unplanned power-generating failures in Texas during Winter Storm Uri. Source: Federal Energy Regulatory CommissionThe other major take-away from the FERC report? Many of the power generation facilities in Texas had not followed recommendations to prepare for severe winter storms with equipment winterization plans.
All types of equipment have temperature limits above or below which they can’t operate efficiently, or at all. Wind farms can operate in frigid temperatures if equipped with de-icing equipment. Gas infrastructure can be enclosed or fitted with heating cables to prevent some cold weather shutdowns.
As climate change continues to cause more extreme weather – heat waves, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and perhaps even winter storms associated with polar vortexes – facility operators need to be prepared to keep the lights on. That’s a challenge another state, California, has been working to address.
California’s counterpoint
On two record-breaking hot days in August 2020, hundreds of thousands of Californians experienced power outages for a few hours. Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was quick to blame these rolling blackouts – which briefly affected 1-2% of the state’s population – on California’s clean energy and climate policies.
An analysis of the August 2020 blackout by California’s grid operator concluded that these power outages were largely caused by two factors. First, the heat wave was unexpectedly extreme and spanned much of the western United States, including neighboring states. As a result, those states did not have extra power to share with California.
Second, at the time, 2020 was California’s hottest August on record by a full degree Fahrenheit. California had insufficient reliable power supplies in the early evening hours as the sun set but temperatures remained high.
But California has not experienced significant power outages in the subsequent four summers. In fact, July 2024 was California’s hottest July on record by nearly two degrees Fahrenheit, with daily maximum temperatures across the month averaging nearly 97 °F. And yet the state’s power grid – which has become significantly cleaner since 2020 – not only avoided blackouts but in fact exported energy to neighboring states during the record-breaking heat wave.
How is that possible, given the myth that “Solar only works when it’s sunny?” That’s where complementary solutions come in, like adding batteries to store extra solar power during the day and building more long-distance electrical transmission lines to strengthen the power grid.
As the state’s grid operator reported, “California’s power grid held up against prolonged record temperatures because of new clean energy resources, more battery storage, and enhanced coordination with state government.”
California also can exchange electricity with its neighbors during times of need – a solution that’s lacking in Texas.
Texas’ power grid is an island
Unlike all other states in the continental U.S., Texas’ power grid remains relatively isolated from the rest of the country and thus lies outside of FERC’s jurisdiction.
There are benefits and downsides to this grid independence approach. Due to looser regulations, Texas has been able to build energy infrastructure like electrical transmission lines, wind turbines, and most recently, solar farms at a faster pace than much of the rest of the country.
But because it has few electrical transmission connections to its neighbors, when Texas is hit by an extreme weather event that knocks out a significant proportion of its power generation, the state has nowhere to turn for help. This ability to import electricity from neighboring regions outside of the extreme weather event is a helpful tool in avoiding major blackouts.
For example, a recent MIT study evaluated a proposed bill that would mandate an increase in regional transmission interconnections. The study reviewed how the bill’s requirements would have affected the number of homes that lost power as a result of Winter Storm Elliot in the eastern United States in December 2022. The study estimated that if these states had more capacity to import electricity from neighboring regions, the number of homes that lost power would have been reduced from 4.7 million to 2.1 million – a 58% reduction in blackouts.
In short, Texas’ grid isolation from its neighbors makes the state more vulnerable to power outages during extreme weather events.
Climate policies are part of the solution to blackouts
Texas’ blackouts were not caused by clean energy or climate policies, but largely by a lack of preparation for the increasingly extreme weather that climate change brings. As renowned climate scientist Lonnie Thompson wrote in 2010, “Sooner or later, we will all deal with global warming. The only question is how much we will mitigate, adapt, and suffer.”
This characterization holds true for the stability of the power grid as well. We can begin to solve the problem by implementing clean energy and climate policies to reduce climate pollution and minimize future extreme weather events. And we can try to adapt by winterizing infrastructure and deploying grid-stabilizing solutions like battery storage and inter-regional transmission connections.
But if we fail to sufficiently mitigate and adapt to this problem by continuing with the status quo, more U.S. residents will suffer from these dangerous power outages.
Tom Toro is a cartoonist and writer who has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010.
There is absolutely no question the electric generation from fossil fuels had a catastrophic failure on February 15, 2021 whereby approximately 36% electric generation from fossil fuels was lost for 36 hours and then was down by approximately 20% for another 40 hours.
Unfortunately there is a lot misunderstanding and misrepresentation on both sides.
At the same time, electric generation from wind and solar dropped off significantly in the ERCOT grid, Starting on Feb 8 2021, electric generation from wind dropped nearly 50-70%, reaching nearly zero on the critical Feb 15th for 15 hours. The drought from wind generation lasted through FEb 20th , a total of 10 days vs the 3 ½ days for the fossil fuel loss. Further the percentage drop was much more severe than the loss of fossil fuel generation.
As the EIA grid monitor shows, Unfortunately, the loss of Wind and solar was across the entire United States and north america. Wind droughts are typically continentally wide in north america as they are in Europe.
I have provided a link to the EIA gov website which has the raw data.
sorry forgot to attached the link
Always best to provide the raw data for study
www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-view/electric_overview/US48/US48/GenerationByEnergySource-4/edit
David-acct:
As we have previously discussed here:
"This example proves beyond doubt that examining cherry picked factoids without any analysis is a complete waste of time. Please do not cite raw data any more. You need to cite analysis of data that filter out gross errors.:" (my emphasis)
Citing the raw EIA data is simply a waste of everyones time. Your factoid that wind was low in Texas in February, 2021 does not prove anything.
As I have repeatedly cited for you, Jacobson et al 2022 has studied this period of time. He finds with his analysis of the data that a completely renewable energy system would be able to fulfill all energy needs nationwide during the period of time you have picked out. If you want to argue that renewable energy cannot supply all required energy you must provide a peer reviewed analysis of the data showing that Jacobson is incorrect. Many other energy researchers have found that completely renewable energy systems can provide all required energy 100% of the time.
I note that all Jacobson's modeling and weather data are posted on line so that anyone can easily check the time period that you refer to. There are scientists who disagree with Jacobson who presumably use the data to check Jacobsons work. Since they have not suggested any time world wide where the weather was so anomalous that Jacobson was incorrect the conclusion is that his model is accurate.
In the current fossil system hydro power is stored to use for peak production every day since nuclear and other baseload plants cannot fulfil peak requirements and require immense storage daily. In a renewable system, hydro will be saved for times when wind and/or solar production is low. This alone would cover a lot of low wind for several weeks. Other storage like batteries will cover the rest.
I have proven that your cherry picked factoids and raw data are incorrectly analyzed. You are wasting our time with your raw data. Spend more time reading the peer reviewed literature and less on denier websites.
I agree with Michael Sweet’s comment @3. However, David-acct does raise important points:
Regarding the need for robust performance:
Additional matters that people should be more aware of or have a fuller and better understanding of:
Mr Sweet
First point is that I was only addressing the failure of the fossils fuels during Feb 2021 in Texas along the failure of wind and solar. C
Curious why someone should not review the raw data. The raw data is the foundation of understanding the facts. The Raw data doesnt lie. The EIA clearly shows the electric generation from both fossil fuel and wind and solar performed poorly during the freeze. That is consistent with the FERC report. The EIA website clearly shows fossil fuel lost around 35-40% of electric generation for 3 ½ days in ERCOT while Electric generation from Wind and solar lost a considerably percentage of electric generation for nearly 10 days across all of north america
You also mention the failure of grid in texas, yet you fail to note that both the SPP grid and the MSO grid were also near collapse.
Below is a statement in the FERC report which is linked in the article.
Here is a statement from FERC
"Today’s final report highlights the critical need for stronger mandatory electric reliability standards, particularly with respect to generator cold weather-critical components and systems. Notably, a combination of freezing issues (44.2 percent) and fuel issues (31.4 percent) caused 75.6 percent of the unplanned generating unit outages, derates and failures to start. Of particular note, protecting just four types of power plant components from icing and freezing could have reduced outages by 67 percent in the ERCOT region, 47 percent in the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and 55 percent in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator South (MISO) regions. Natural gas-fired units represented 58 percent of all generating units experiencing unplanned outages, derates or failures to start. The remaining portion was comprised of wind (27 percent), coal (6 percent), solar (2 percent) and other generation types (7 percent), with four nuclear units making up less than 1 percent. "
A couple of points worth noting:
Not only did ERCOT have significant outages of fossil fuel generation, but so did the MISO and SPP grids, both of which were also near collapse.
Wind had 27% outage in addition to a loss of another 30-40% due to the lack of wind. That loss was continental wide.
David acct. Regarding the Texas power blackout in 2021. I find what you say confusing. You seem to partly blame wind power for the problems, because it didn't generate enough power due to lack of wind. This is not the case. Although there was a lack of wind, the system designers know the wind intermittency issues of wind power and the system is designed with that in mind to ensure it can cope.
The primary reason for the power crisis was cold weather freezing up some wind turbine blades and the gas supply infrastructure. Most of the failure was in the gas infrastructure.
These ice related problems were in turn due to to a lack of de-cing equipment due to ERCOTS irresponsible management of the system and the failure of Ercots oversight body (some of which you mentioned). My reading is that Ercots irresponsible management seems to be driven by a libertarian leaning, excessively business friendly, cost cutting ethos that dislikes regulations and puts safety, ability to handle extreme situations, and grid stability last.
Other states did not have the same blackouts including states with significant wind and solar power. The cold weather icing issue also lead to a cascade of other failures and bad decisions.
References:
www.integrityenergy.com/blog/texas-winter-storm-2021-explained/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis
Nigelj
Thanks for the comment.
As I stated, there is tremendous amount of misinformation being pushed by both sides who try to affix blame for the Texas fiasco on only fossil fuels or only renewables. The reality is that all forms of electric generation performed very poorly in the ERCOT grid. The major difference is that ERCOT was heavily dependent on natural gas because it was known 3-4 days in advance that wind was going to produce very little over the next 8-10 days due to the lack of wind . Unfortunately, electric generation from natural gas had a catastrophic failure at a time when it was known that wind could not perform.
I am always surprised by the claim that wind did perform on the other grids. That claim is easily debunked by reviewing the electric generation by source at the EIA grid monitor site. Both the performance of the SWPP and the MISO grids of electric generation from wind very similar to the performance of the ERCOT grid over that same time period.
regarding the icing, less than 10% of the wind loss was due to blades icing up, (probably less than 5%), in summary, the icing was a very minor factor with the loss of wind generation. The loss of wind generation due to icing is a common denier talking point, sounds good, but it is false.
Again thanks for your comments
David acct @8, I agree there is a lot of misinformation by both sides. However I didn't say or imply wind provided plenty of output in other states. Much of the country had low levels of wind. I didnt dispute that.
The point I was trying to make is that other states did not have big problems with generation because their system is better managed than Texas, and has better de-icing equipment. The reason Texas had a disaster was not renewables, or intermittency of renewables, or fossil fules per se. It was lack of de-icing equipment reflecting bad management by Ercot.