Nearly half of Texas wind turbines are frozen

statesman.com

13 points·lai-yin··6 comments

Austin ATX here. This is absolutely ridiculous. Been without power (or heat) since 5 am in 78702 going on 12 hours so far. And Austin Electric saying they're not turning on the power "until conditions improve." What were mandatory rolling blackouts for "40 minutes" became permanent ones.

Not enough solar or nuclear. ERCOT system is extremely dependent on natural gas and doesn't have any out-of-state interconnections.

It’s weird that this is being spun as a wind turbine problem when during the winter they don’t generate as much power as usual. There was a big screw up in the other areas that generate power it seems (like natural gas that is in high demand in the winter).

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/texas-power-grid-cru...

It's pretty sad when you consider that the same thing happened just 10 years ago in February 2011 when a deep freeze caused blackouts.

There are wind turbines in Antarctica that don't freeze up. So what's happened with those Texan wind turbines? Someone forget to lube them or something?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-15/winter-s-...

Millions Lose Power in Texas as Deep Freeze Sows Market Chaos

By Javier Blas, Brian K Sullivan, and Naureen S Malik

Bloomberg

February 14, 2021, 7:41 PM EST Updated on February 15, 2021, 12:41 PM EST

And TX wind power projections are dropping to 500MW out of 24,000 MW wind system. http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYCOP_HSL.htm...

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