A Texas Electric Reliability Board official said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, was offline. Nearly twice as much, 30 gigawatts, has been lost due to thermal sources, which include gas, coal and nuclear energy.
“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin.
While Webber said all energy sources in Texas are to blame for the power crisis, the natural gas industry in particular is producing significantly less power than normal.
“Gas is currently failing in the most spectacular way,” Webber said.
Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, confirmed sentiment Tuesday.
“It seems that many of the generation that went offline today were mainly due to problems with the natural gas system,” he said during a Tuesday call with reporters.
Some, however, have focused their blame on wind power.
“This is what happens when you force the network to rely in part on wind as a power source,” said U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston. tweeted Tuesday dinner. “If the weather conditions get bad like this week, there is no alternating renewable energy like wind if you need it.”
He further noted that a nuclear reactor in Bay City was shut down due to the cold, and finally energy experts said the biggest culprit, “Low natural gas supply: ERCOT plans to use 67GW of natural gas / coal, but could only get 43GW of it. We did not run out of natural gas, but we no longer had the capacity to get natural gas. Texas does not use cold insulation – things were freezing. ‘
Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, known for his right-wing Facebook messages that have spread misinformation and reinforced conspiracy theories in the past, also posted an unadorned view of wind energy on Facebook: “We should never build another wind turbine in Texas.”
In another post, Miller was even more candid, but also misleading, “Insult added to injury: those ugly wind turbines out there are one of the main reasons why we experience power outages. Isn’t that ironic? … So much for the unsightly. “Unproductive, Obama monuments that rob energy. At least they show us where idiots live.”
While skeptics of wind power claim that the freezing of the week means that wind power cannot be relied upon, wind turbines, such as natural gas plants, can be ‘overwintered’ or adapted to operate during very low temperatures. Experts say many of the generators in Texas did not need the investments to prevent equipment outages, as the state does not regularly experience severe winter storms.
It is estimated that about 80% of that, or 67 gigawatts, of the total winter capacity of the grid can be generated by natural gas, coal and nuclear power. Only 7% of ERCOT’s predicted winter capacity, or six gigawatts, is expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.
The production of natural gas in the state has plummeted due to the freezing conditions, making it difficult for power plants to get the necessary fuel to run the plants. Natural gas power stations usually do not have much fuel storage on site, experts said. Instead, the plants rely on the constant flow of natural gas from pipelines that run across the state from areas such as the oil and natural gas-producing Perm basin in West Texas, to large demand centers such as Houston and Dallas.
Gov. Greg Abbott said fossil fuel resources were contributing to the network’s problems when he described the situation Monday afternoon.
“The capacity of some power generating companies has been frozen. This includes the natural gas and coal generators,” he wrote in a statement. tweet.
Heather Zichal, chief operating officer of the American Clean Power Association, said opponents of renewable energy were trying to deduct from the failures elsewhere in the system and delayed the “transition to a clean energy future”.
“It is shameful to see how the antagonists of clean power have been for years – attacking it, whether it is raining, snowing or shining the sun – engaging in a politically opportunistic character that is misleading Americans into advancing an agenda which has nothing to do with restoring power to Texas communities, ”she said.
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