Wind Provides Record 40 Percent of Grid in Texas

Subtitle:  Flexible Gas-powered Grid Manages Quite Well

It was a typical winter cold front that came barreling into North Texas in late December, 2015.  Windy.  Cold.  For hour after hour after hour (approximately 20 consecutive hours.)   Western novels describe such cold winds and how cowboys and settlers cope.   This one was real.  The key point is that the wind turbines in Texas cranked it up and sent the power down the lines.  The electrical grid responded, with other generating plants backing down to keep the grid balanced.   There were no blackouts.  No brownouts.  No problems. 

An article from Scientific American see link describes the wind, the generation, and the Texas grid response.   ("Texas Sets New All-Time Wind Energy Record"). 

From the article:

"The latest record is news not only because wind provided nearly half of Texas’s electricity needs, but also that it did so for so many hours in a row. The sustained winds brought on by the low-pressure front caused wind energy production to exceed 10 gigawatts for essentially the entirety of December 20.

The duration of the record is a big deal because it shows that the rest of the Texas grid can handle a whole lot of wind energy for an extended period of time without suffering instability or brownouts that some predicted. Texas was able to balance the intermittent wind because it has a lot of natural gas power plants, which can adjust their power output more quickly than coal-fired power plants. Considering this fact, it seems like a happy coincidence that market forces are transitioning the U.S. electricity system toward a mix of renewable energy and natural gas."

There has been some activity in the blogosphere discussing renewable energy on the grids, and how the grids simply cannot handle more than some percent of intermittent generation such as wind and solar, once that percent reaches a tipping point.  Some articles discuss 20 percent as the point where problems begin, others suggest 30 percent.   Yet here, we see that Texas (a pretty big grid, by the way), managed 40 percent not just for a few moments, but for many hours, almost a full day.  

It is quite clear that grid designers and planners made a robust grid in Texas.   It is also notable that Texas has, as written here on SLB, a grid that by design can handle the intermittent renewables: very little coal and nuclear, the stubborn baseload plants that refuse to reduce their output.   Coal power is only 28 percent in Texas, and nuclear is only 11 percent.   Flexible-output natural gas power is the biggest source of generation at 48 percent.   

Related articles on SLB:

see link   Wind Energy Increasing in US - Grids Are Fine
see link   California Renewables Not Crashing the Grid  - 31 Percent and Grid is Fine
see link   Energy Supply in Post-Coal America - Renewables to Replace Coal in 20 Years
see link   Climate Denialism - Nuclear vs Renewable Energy
see link   Nuclear Until Renewables Can Shoulder The Load - A Bad Idea

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2016 by Roger Sowell, all rights reserved

Offshore Windturbines in Texas

Offshore wind technology gets a boost in Texas, as Governor Rick Perry awarded funds for the Texas Emerging Technology Fund at the Wind Energy Center at Texas A&M University.  The fund will lead to 18 MW of offshore windturbines.  see link  This is bad news for nuclear power, which cannot compete against wind energy.  

Windturbine using tension-leg anchoring system
credit: NREL

The windturbines will likely be place offshore from Corpus Christi, which has good and steady wind.  

From the article: 
"Texas A&M will collaborate with Texas Tech University, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi and the University of Texas at Brownsville to develop new turbine and platform technology for offshore use."

The Gulf of Mexico, especially that part just offshore from Texas, has many hundreds of oil and gas platforms.  These structures make excellent bases for wind turbines, and reduce the cost of offshore wind installations.   The platforms could also serve as an anchoring point for seabed energy storage systems, such as that described recently by researchers at MIT. see link.  

The energy storage would be via submerged hollow spheres made of concrete, which are vented to the atmosphere.  At night and other periods of low power demand, the energy from offshore windturbines pump seawater out of the spheres.  During peak demand, or when the wind speed is too low to produce power, seawater flows into the spheres via conventional hydroelectric turbines connected to generators.   The hydroelectric mode could also be employed when storms occur, and the windturbines must be stopped for their own protection. 

NREL research published in 2010 estimated that US offshore wind can produce 4,000 GW of energy. see link  If only 10 percent of that were to be installed, that would be the equivalent of 400 full-size nuclear power plants.  The US currently has 100 nuclear power plants.  Also, if the offshore wind resource produces only 30 percent of the installed capacity on an annual basis, the amount of wind energy would be the 120 GW, or roughly 20 percent of the entire electric power consumed in the US.  With seabed energy storage as described above, this power would be reliable, dispatchable, and load-following when required.   The numbers could easily be doubled, or tripled.   With quadrupled values, that is, 40 percent of the offshore potential installed, that wind resource would supply 80 percent of the US's power needs.  Onshore wind supplying 10 percent, and hydropower supplying 10 percent would make the US completely renewable in electric power.  

Criticism

Some will doubt the ability of the windturbines to reliably and affordably produce electric power.  However, the combination of existing offshore platforms and wind turbines greatly reduces the installation cost.  The use of submerged spheres for storage also greatly increases the price the utilities would pay for the power.  

Conclusion

This is the type of future energy research that must be applauded.  As we say in Texas, way to fire, Governor!  Way to fire...

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California

Texas Sets Wind Energy Record

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, said that at 8:48 p.m. Wednesday, March 26, 2014, wind farms connected to ERCOT’s transmission network generated a new high of

1.5 MW Turbine
photo: NREL

10,296 megawatts. The previous high was 9,689 megawatts.  ERCOT also said that at 3:14 a.m. Thursday, wind produced 38.4 percent of all the power on its grid, the highest share ever.  (link here)

With just over 12,000 MW installed capacity in Texas, the new peak in generation represents almost 86 percent of potential generation.  

Wind power is performing exactly as it is designed to do:  it produces power when the wind blows.  Critics scoff at wind power, saying it is unreliable and too costly because conventional generating plants must be built to carry the load when wind cannot.  That argument has no validity, because one cannot expect windturbines as presently designed and installed to serve as baseload or load-following generating systems.  At present, windturbines perform exactly as designed.  An analogy would be expecting a delivery truck to perform like a race car and win a Formula One race.  No rational people would ever expect a heavy delivery truck to win such a race.  The truck was designed for a completely different purpose.  How then, can windturbines be expected to provide baseload or load-following capability? 

Wind power will someday provide such power, but only when cost-effective, grid-scale energy storage is available.  Over time, wind energy economics will continue to decrease the cost to generate from wind, as economies of scale and economy from mass production continue to reduce costs.  Also, as more transmission lines are built, the economics of wind energy improve.  At some point very soon, the full production costs of wind energy (capital plus operating charges) will be low enough to begin justifying the high costs of grid-scale energy storage.  When the combined cost of wind energy generation plus grid-scale energy storage reach parity with conventional generation, the real boom in wind energy will begin.  

Grid-scale storage will allow power produced from windturbines to be stored as the power is generated, typically at night for on-shore systems.  Night power prices are usually low, so windturbine operators would prefer not to sell the power at night.  However, the next day, power prices increase.  The storage system will then release the stored power in a controlled manner, producing reliable, even load-following, power into the grid at high on-peak prices.  The drawback is that some energy is lost in the storage and release steps.   The overall economics will depend on the prices and energy losses.  

For now, the Texas windturbines are proving that wind energy is viable, wind energy works as designed. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/03/27/5687340/wind-power-sets-new-daily-records.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/03/27/5687340/wind-power-sets-new-daily-records.html#storylink=cpy

NEWTAP - Revisiting Water for the West

The just-completed Orange County Water Summit, held in Anaheim, California, was quite interesting for a number of reasons.   As background, fresh water in California, and other dry Western states, is a critical issue due to scarcity.  Water in California is from several sources: Colorado River brought in by an aqueduct system, snowmelt from the Sierra Mountains, some groundwater via wells, and a tiny amount from sea water desalination plants.

Within California, excess water from the northern part of the state is pumped to the southern part.  A famous (or infamous) aqueduct also diverts river water from high in the southern Sierras into Los Angeles.

What intrigued me was the areas of focus by the conference organizers, and in particular, what they left out.  The focus areas included waste water recycling, reductions in water use, and desalination.   What was omitted is the large transfer of fresh water from the Missouri or Mississippi Rivers, via a new canal and pumping system.

I asked two or three people I met if they had heard of such a proposal, and none had.  I directed them to this blog and my article on NEWTAP, my proposal for a National Excess Water Transfer Aqueduct Project.  

Briefly, NEWTAP would transfer river water from the Missouri River at Kansas City to the continental divide in New Mexico, just south of Interstate Highway 40.  A new canal and pumps would transfer as much water as needed for the West.  From the continental divide, the water would gravity-flow into the Colorado River, and be stored in Lake Powell and Lake Mead.  When needed, the water would be released and generate power in the existing hydroelectric power plants.

Power for the canal's pumps could be provided by wind-turbines, since the canal would cross an area with excellent wind.

An improvement on NEWTAP would be branch canals, such as a canal to bring fresh water to West Texas.

California is contemplating a state water bond of approximately $10 to $15 billion dollars.  This is a stopgap measure at best, and will not solve the long-term problem of water.

It is time, I believe, for NEWTAP to be considered as a national construction project.   The Erie Canal was built in only 8 years, and was completed almost 200 years ago in 1825.   NEWTAP would be about twice the distance.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California

EPA CO2 Endangerment Finding Review by OIG

The US EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released today its report titled “Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gases Endangerment FindingData Quality Processes.”

It is important to note that this was a Procedural review and not a Substantive review of the underlying science.   Procedural review merely means comparing the procedures that EPA used to what is required under the various laws and regulations.   Substantive review means evaluating the data and science that EPA relied on in forming their Endangerment Finding.   The Procedural rules that EPA must follow depend on whether the Technical Support Document (TSD) is a “highly influential scientific assessment” or not.  OIG considers the TSD to be a highly influential scientific assessment, but EPA did not.   There is a higher standard of care, or procedures that must be followed, for a highly influential scientific assessment.  It is these additional procedures that OIG found lacking in EPA’s work.

Background

For some background, and a description of a TSD:  As the primary scientific basis for EPA’s finding, the [EPA] relied upon assessments conducted by other organizations [the IPCC, National Research Council, and US Global Change Research Program].  EPA summarized the results of these and other scientific assessments in a technical support document (TSD).  There are specified criteria by which a document is to be judged to determine if it is a highly influential scientific assessment.  OIG presents these criteria in its report as:

“A highly influential scientific assessment is a scientific assessment that: 

·       

• A) Could have a potential impact of more than $500 million in any
  year on either the public or private sector, or
  
  
  B) Is novel, controversial, or precedent setting, or has significant
  interagency interest.”

OIG stated the level of peer review for the highly influential scientific assessments, and goes on to say that:

“For highly influential scientific assessments, OMB guidance requires more attention to peer review consideration such as individual versus panel review, timing, scope of the review, selection of reviewers, disclosure and attribution, public participation, and disposition of reviewer comments. If the material to be disseminated falls within OMB’s definition of highly influential scientific assessment, OMB requires the agency to adhere to the peer review procedures identified in Section III of its bulletin.

OMG guidance also requires that agencies certify compliance with the requirements of the bulletin and information quality guidelines when using influential scientific information or highly influential scientific assessments to support a regulatory action. This certification and other relevant materials should be included in the administrative record for the action.”

Next, OIG discussed what the EPA did procedurally.  “EPA had the TSD reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. This review did not meet all [Office of Management and Budget] OMB requirements for peer review of a highly influential scientific assessment primarily because the review results and EPA’s response were not publicly reported, and because 1 of the 12 reviewers was an EPA employee.”

No public reporting of the 12 scientists’ review, no public reporting of EPA’s response to that review, and having an EPA staff member as one of the 12 scientists were cited as procedural errors. This is essentially, for the first two errors, a lack of transparency.  The public does not know what the reviewers found and reported, nor the EPA’s response, if any.  Were the findings unanimous?  Or, was there a split of opinion?  Did the EPA ignore the review panel’s findings?  At this point, we don’t know.   The obvious conflict of interest from the reviewer who is an EPA staff member should have made his or her opinion or vote irrelevant.   OMB requires an external peer review.

Reasons Given by EPA why TSD was not Considered a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment

“They [EPA} noted that the TSD consisted only of science that was previously peer reviewed and that these reviews were deemed adequate under the Agency’s policy. They also stated that, as described in the final Federal Register notice, the Administrator primarily relied upon assessments conducted by other organizations rather than the TSD, which summarizes the conclusions and findings of these other assessments.”

End Results

It appears that the OIG will allow the Endangerment Finding to stand, and is recommending only that EPA revise its procedures for future.   This could be a wrong interpretation, however nowhere in the OIG report is the EPA required to revise or re-issue the missing transparency documents, nor hold a second and independent review by qualified scientists. 

The fact that only procedures were evaluated means that the clearly false statements and conclusions of many of the peer-reviewed papers and documents were considered acceptable by EPA.  As reported earlier on SLB, the EPA accepted such wildly inaccurate statements as glaciers disappearing in the Himalayas.  Also, as the State of Texas wrote in their recent petition, regarding the Climategate emails,  

"[t]he emails do not reflect the work of objective

scientists dispassionately conducting their work and zealously pursuing the truth. Rather

they reveal a cadre of activist scientists colluding and scheming to advance what they

want the science to be—even where the empirical data suggest a different outcome." Also, "to the extent their [these scientists'] objectivity, impartiality, truthfulness, and scientific

integrity are compromised or in doubt, so too is the objectivity, impartiality, truthfulness,

and scientific integrity of the IPCC report, the CRU temperature data, the NOAA

temperature data, and other scientific research that is shown to have relied on their

compromised research."

Texas' petition also shows how the IPCC authors manipulated the climate temperature data, citing the by-now infamous email of using a "trick" to "hide the decline." Also, especially egregious data manipulation is discussed with Russian and New Zealand temperature data. Such manipulation showed undue warming. Also, the IPCC admitted they have lost critical climate data.

Then the real fun begins, with several major discredited claims, using non-peer-reviewed sources. These include Himalayan glaciers receding faster than anyone thought (the aren't). Also, Chinese temperature data was seriously flawed, and had no source documents. They made up the data. Next, the claim that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level, and subject to inundation from sea level rise. This is erroneous, as only 26 percent is below sea level. The fourth and final example included in the Petition for Reconsideration is the wild claim that "up to 40 percent of the Amazonian rain forest could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation." This was from the non-scientific, but wildly agenda-driven World Wildlife Federation, the WWF.

Apparently, these types of "peer-reviewed" scientific conclusions on the impact of man-made CO2 on the planet's climate are acceptable to the US EPA.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 

Marina del Rey, California