Officials say the situation in Texas is dire, as about 3 million homes and businesses go without power after a deadly, record-breaking stormAs some of the coldest temperatures in decades hit the Lone Star State, many have blamed an unusual source: wind turbines
While the state power grid can handle its blazing hot summers, it is not nearly as prepared for harsh winter weather – extremes which are only expected to get worse if the climate crisis escalatesFrozen wind turbines in the state prompted some conservative politicians to declare it renewable energy is responsible for the catastrophic power cuts and rolling power outages.
“This is what happens when you force the grid to rely partially on wind as a power source,” said Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw. tweeted Tuesday. “When the weather gets bad, like this week, there is no intermittent renewable energy like wind when you need it.”
“We should never build another wind turbine in Texas,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller wrote on Facebook. “The experiment has failed enormously.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott echoed the sentiment and took the opportunity to criticize the Green New Deal.
“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Abbott said to Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday. “Our wind and solar power were turned off, making up more than 10% of our power grid, and that put Texas in a state-wide lack of power.”
But the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which powers about 90% of the state, said on Tuesday that wind power is only responsible for a fraction of the loss. Of the 45,000 megawatts of power that was offline during the peak, 30,000 megawatts came from natural gas, while 16,000 megawatts came from wind turbines.
“More than 80% of the power shortage that hit Texas was due to problems at coal and gas plants,” PolitiFact reported.
Experts say traditional energy sources, including coal and natural gas, performed below expectations, while wind power actually performed above expectations.
“The main story remains the failure of thermal power plants – natural gas, coal and nuclear plants – that ERCOT reckons are there when needed. They have failed,” said Jesse Jenkins, professor of engineering at Princeton. tweeted Tuesday. “Those of you who have heard that frozen wind turbines are to blame for this, think again. Extreme demand and outages from thermal power plants are the main cause.”
Proponents of renewable energy destroyed state officials for blaming only the turbines.
“It’s a shame to see the old opponents clean power – attacking it, be it raining, snowing or the sun shining – participating in a politically opportunistic charade that tricks Americans into promoting an agenda that has nothing to do with restoring power to Texas communities, “Heather Zichal, the CEO of the American Clean Power Association, said in a statement Tuesday, “It’s an extreme weather problem, not a clean power problem. In any case, it shows why we need to invest in building more renewable energy sources with better transmission and storage to replace outdated systems. ”
Both ERCOT and energy analysts say natural gas, which provides just over a third of Texas’ electricity and heats about 40% of its homes, is most to blame for the outages.
“By far the biggest outages come from our natural gas plants,” Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University, told CBS MoneyWatch reporter Irina Ivanova. “Some were not available for scheduled maintenance. Others were not designed to operate reliably in extremely cold weather and others could not get enough natural gas.”
“It seems that much of the generation that has gone offline today was mainly due to problems with the natural gas system,” Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, told reporters.
Abbott also acknowledged it, contrary to his comments on Fox News. “The power of some of the companies generating the power has been frozen. This includes natural gas and coal generators,” he says tweeted Monday.
Additionally, there are anti-icing methods to run wind turbines in freezing temperatures, but Texas hasn’t invested in them due to the rarity of extremely cold weather there.
“Iowa and Denmark get a greater percentage of their energy from wind than we do. There are ways to winterize many of these energy suppliers, but it costs money and requires power and maintenance,” Cohan said. “In Texas and the South, we’ve focused more on keeping our lights on in the summer.”
ERCOT said it was prepared for winter storms, but even their most extreme forecasts were surpassed by this week’s severe weather, and power demand skyrocketed. According to the United States Department of Energy, almost every source of energy had a failure during the storm.
Texas is the only state in the mainland US to have its own separate power grid – it is unregulated by the federal government and disconnected from neighboring states. On Tuesday, Abbott ordered an investigation into ERCOT.
“The Texas Electric Reliability Council has been anything but reliable for the past 48 hours. Far too many Texans are without power and heat for their homes,” he said in a report. pronunciation“This is unacceptable.”