In winter all renewables are inhibited and at risk. Wind: frozen/disabled turbines. Water: low water levels, small hydro plants often have to shut down. Solar is obvious.
I'm not a fan of nuclear - externalities that last thousands of years are horrible. But until fusion arrives (if ever), nuclear and gas sadly are the baseline providers we have to rely on for the foreseeable future.
"Most of the power knocked offline came from thermal sources, Woodfin said, particularly natural gas."
So natural gas and other thermal sources (i.e., coal and nuclear) created most of the problem.
Wind power is actually potentially a very good solution for occasional cold spells, because extreme colds usually comes with high winds. Of course you have to design your turbines not to freeze.
While true (and I'm not saying you don't know this, more just pointing it out), wind works great in cold climates. We've done our homework on this one already.
Last I saw they got something like 50% of their power from wind.
Anyone who is using this event to say that renewables are a bad idea is selling a completely false narrative.
Not sure what you're trying to say with this point, the average low of e.g. Dallas is 39F not 0F. I'm quite sure the record low in Denmark is going to be lower than the record low in Dallas if that's what you intended to compare instead.
The second issue is valid logic for why you need higher peak generation not why renewables can't supply it. Wind was overproducing estimates, the problem wasn't wind couldn't provide during the load period it was that the plants of all types weren't prepared to operate in the cold.
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I think the main differences are:
- Denmark is part of a larger grid system instead of independent
- Denmark pays more for electricity
- Denmark prepares its equipment for extreme conditions
and I think these are all true for all power sources.
Texas is pretty green, when it comes to energy.
Nuclear would have been fine throughout this.
Another case where systems misbehave when they’re exposed to circumstances outside the expected range.
https://www.utilitydive.com/user_media/diveimage/ercotmix.pn...
Almost all of the ERCOT shortfall was loss of thermal generating capacity--mostly natural gas. The natural gas was shunted to heating because those contracts are fixed and higher priority (market failure). Also, some of the natural gas lines, wells, and pumping stations froze (planning failure).
ERCOT lost more than 35% of its natural gas generating capacity. This was everybody cutting corners and finally getting burned.
Wind power is close to 25% of ercot grid.
Under high-load conditions this is very definitely not true.