Culpability

 

Culpability

 

        This builds on my last essay because, as events related to the Texas power outages continue to unfold, we are hearing even more from Republicans attempting to shift blame to Democrats who endorse alternate energy sources, with wind their primary target. I will lay out the details of why this a Texas and Texas Republican leadership problem. Period.

        The failure of roughly half of the wind turbines in Texas earlier this week isn’t the biggest cause of the power shortage crisis that has left one-third of Texans without power in historic freezing conditions. Frozen infrastructure at gas and coal power stations, such as pipelines, are the main culprit. Of the total amount of power that suffered outages, wind accounted for only some 13%, a far smaller share than accounted for by coal, gas and nuclear plants.

        Still, wind power is a major resource in Texas: it supplied 23% of the state’s electricity in 2020, second only to the 40% share by natural gas, and had been producing a larger share than normal before the widespread outages. Wind has also attracted an outsize share of blame for the Texas fiasco, including a Wall Street Journal editorial that attacked its susceptibility to the freezing weather as another sign of its unreliability.

         Anyone for a reality check? Why don’t wind turbines fail all the time in colder climates, such as Canada, Sweden or the American Midwest? Because they prepare for it, realizing that electrical power is a modern essential, that’s why. The answer, in short, is that turbines in colder places are typically equipped with de-icing and other tools, such as built-in heating. In Texas, where the weather is almost never this cold, they usually are not. This is partially due to a “hands off” attitude re: public utility regulation as state policy.

        “Cold weather kits can keep [wind turbines] operating when temperatures plunge. This is the norm in colder states and in Europe,” says Samuel Brock, a spokesman for the American Clean Power Association. “Historically in Texas, given the warm climate, it hasn’t been necessary.” But that doesn't mean it might be, huh?

        Bullshit! During the February 2011 Southwest cold snap, an unprecedented 16% of wind units within Texas grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ operation region reportedly failed—709 MW due to blade icing and another 1,237 MW because frigid temperatures exceeded turbine limits, specifically minimum operating temperatures. Let me reiterate; they knew it could happen, because it already had, nine years earlier! And, anyone literate in the Texas wind energy market should have known it was preventable.

        Note this again: While Republican talking heads from Senators to Governor to the incredibly ignorant Tucker Carlson, slammed renewables as responsible for the Texas 2021 disaster, they (the Texans) were covering their asses for knowing it could happen, and did in 2011, and having done F***-all to prepare for a conceivable reoccurrence.

         If you appreciate irony, think of it like this: Most Republicans and many Texans are climate change deniers, yet it almost seems they were counting on Global Warming to prevent a repeat of the 2011 February cold snap! Here’s another touch of irony: Everyone, from Cruz to you name it, is blaming Democratic “green” initiatives for the emergence of wind power in Texas power generation, and by extension the current disaster.

        When we travelled through west Texas in 2006, we were struck by the huge wind farms east of El Paso. Who was POTUS? Bush43. Who was governor?  Rick Perry, later Trump Energy Secretary. Both Republicans. Under their aegis, Texas actually led the nation in new wind power installations with mammoth state incentives to build more, in 2001, 2003, 2005 and now leads the nation in wind power production. In fact, if Texas were a nation, it would rank fifth in the world in that statistic! Texans blaming Democrats for wind initiatives is as bad as Donald Trump’s worst whopper.

        Wind generators in places like Canada typically install “cold weather packages” to extend temperature ranges, using up to 200 kW to 300 kW of parasitic power per turbine at conditions below –20C for heating all temperature sensitive components, components such as the nacelle space, yaw drive and pitch motors, and the gearbox, slip ring, controller and control cabinet, and battery. Similar use of small amounts of generated capacity and/or carbon blade coating are facts of life for most wind farm operators.  GE’s Cold Weather Extreme package for its 2.5 x l turbine, for example, ensures operations in temperatures to –30C (22 below zero, F!) and a “survival mode” to –40C. It just didn’t get that cold in Texas, folks!

        Lack of regulation, ignoring industry standards, Republican insistence on free market pricing of a critical commodity, and refusal to be part of the larger national grid are all legacies of  36 consecutive years of Republican (non) governance in the Lone Star state.