The real problem is Texas didn't have enough conventional - energy production to handle Posted: Feb 19th, 2021 - 1:36 pm In Reply to: They shut down coal plants too - nm
peak cold weather demands.
Wind generation in Texas or Kansas or anywhere can fluctuate wildly. I have seen SPP (where Kansas is, Southwest Power Pool) have 43GW of power supplied by non-wind and I have seen 3 GW of power supplied by non-wind. They know this and it is fine. The wind variability is known and fine. What wasn’t known and wasn’t fine was non-wind generation was going to fail. Unexpected shortages are way more serious than expected shortages.
Of course, the wild fluctuations in wind power is one of its major detriments.
To cover for those, you have to build excess capacity for outer producers.
You are, essentially, building twice the capacity for no real gain.
In Texas, to keep the cost down, they drew down their buffer (excess capacity) from about 20% down to single digits.
That was a major cause of the problems.
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