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The Answer, My Friend, Isn’t Blowing in the Wind

Filed under: Natural Gas, Energy, Commodities, General, Risk Management — Patrick Reames | February 28, 2008 @ 8:05 am (Views: 476)

Yesterday evening, ERCOT, the Texas ISO, had to declare an emergency and interrupt 1,100 MW of demand due to a combination of colder temperatures and under-delivery of some generators. However the real lynch pin in the situation was the loss of some 1,400 MW of power out of the West Texas wind farms. Just as the evening demand curve was on the rise, the winds in west died down, cutting wind power production from 1,700 MW to just 300 MW. Fortunatly, other non-wind units were brought on line and the crisis passed within a couple of hours.

This is a perfect example of why relying on wind as a baseload supply is a bad idea. We cannot modulate the wind nor can we depend on its blowing when we need it. Wind power can be a good supplement to the more traditional sources of energy, but for anyone that believes wind can replace coal, nuclear, or gas as a fuel for generation, well, to paraphrase the soup nazi, “No power for you!” if the wind isn’t blowing.

Don’t get me wrong. I think wind power is great thing in the right situation - clean, but not necessarily reliable power. Its also pretty cool watching a windmill explode when the brakes fail in a thunderstorm.

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2 Comments

Comment by tomgray:
March 1, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
For a more balanced view of the Texas utility system event, see today’s (3/1/08) Houston Chronicle article.

When the wind stops blowing and wind farm electricity generation drops, the process usually takes hours. By contrast, other power plants may go out of service instantaneously when a problem occurs. Wind forecasting, which could have helped address the ERCOT situation, can be and is being used by utility system operators to manage wind on their systems, and will become standard practice as the use of this clean, renewable energy source continues to grow.

Regards,
Thomas O. Gray
American Wind Energy Association
www.powerofwind.org
www.awea.org
Comment by Patrick Reames:
March 3, 2008 @ 8:29 am
Tom,

You’re correct, my post is not a complete examination of all the issues that occured during the outage. However, as I pointed out, the problem appears to be percipitated by the loss of the wind generation. If the other non-wind facilities had come up as they were supposed to, it would not have been a problem, just another day like any other involving wind generation. However, my point is that while wind can play an important role in the power mix, using wind as baseload generation can be risky. If the wind isn’t blowing, other facilities have to come on line to service the load. Bottom line, while wind can help reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, it can not replace “traditional” sources until the time that the energy generated by wind can be effectively stored for those times that its not blowing.

Patrick

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The Answer, My Friend, Isn’t Blowing in the Wind

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