Prof.: Texas turbines may not have been prepared
Feb. 19—PLATTSBURGH — Right now, wind turbines turn in Churubusco and Chateaugay.
It's much colder here for longer periods of time than in Texas, and the difference between why the wind farms are online here and why wind turbines seized up in Texas are simple: winterization, state regulation and federal regulation, news reports say.
Companies operating in the North Country chose cold weather safeguards possibly including components to heat the gearbox, yaw and pitch motors.
"It's going to differ from manufacturer to manufacturer," Scott Buffett, department chair and program coordinator for the Wind Energy and Turbine Technology Program at Clinton Community College, said.
"There's going to be some heaters in the cabinets. Things like that that you're going to find in the electrical cabinets that they might not have ordered for turbines in Texas because they don't get as cold weather."
Besides heaters to keep components warm, countries such as Sweden equip blades with carbide fibers and heat sensors to keep them ice free.
"If you have ice developing on the blades, that is an issue because it can an imbalance depending on how the ice is forming and how the turbines spin," Buffett said.
"So that's an issue no matter where you are with icing, and they would shut down due to an imbalance on the blades because they are spinning slowly."
Thursday evening, approximately 349,679 Texans remained without power, according to PowerOutage.US.
"Really the only thing I can see is having cabinet heaters and if they're dealing with icing, they have to shut down the turbines for icing," Buffett said.
"But they will shut down on their own because they have sensors for vibration."
FOSSIL FUEL STATE
Wind energy generates approximately 10 percent to the Lone Star state's singular energy grid, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) Interconnection.
The rest of the country is either on the Eastern Interconnection or Western Interconnection, though El Paso, Texas is linked into the Western grid and did not lose power like it's sister cities.
Ninety-percent of Texas' power is sourced from fossil fuels generation, from coal, natural gas and nuclear energy.
A recent headline from the Texas Tribune states: "Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans blamed green energy for Texas' power woes. But the state runs on fossil fuels."
"It's estimated that of the grid's total winter capacity, about 80 percent of it, or 67 gigawatts could be generated by natural gas, coal, and some nuclear power. Only 7 percent of ERCOT's forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state," according to The Texas Tribune article.
"No, frozen wind turbines aren't the main culprit for Texas' power outages."
Rolling blackouts continue as ERCOT tries to stabilize its grid while political attacks target renewables such as wind and solar.
"Because it's so cold, there is more demand on the grid, and people are trying to run electric heaters to stay warm," Buffett said.
"It's just drawing too much, although Texas only gets a fraction of its power from wind. I think people are trying to blame it on wind."
TOO MUCH DEMAND
Increased demand can pull too much current off of wires and possibly damage wind equipment.
"They have to shut down because they can't meet the demand," Buffett said.
"I don't know if you ever had a home generator, but when you start pulling power it causes the generator to slow down and then the motor kicks in and speeds it up. The same thing happens to all the power generation out there.
"When you start to pull off too much power from the generators, it bogs them down. Then, you get brownouts. Then, you get damage to equipment. From what I'm reading, most of it is just too much demand because they are not used to having that much demand. It's not totally the turbines that are causing the problem."
With a polar vortex and power blackouts testing their mettle, millions of Texans also contend with bursting pipes, no water or boiling tap water.
Even the deadly mess in Texas also touches here.
Dannemora Federal Credit Union President/CEO Chris Hay sent out a message Wednesday to members about the restoration efforts of its Online Banking, Mobile App and ATM services, which were impacted due to the Texas-based Fiserv, DFCU's digital services partner.
Thursday, ATM services remained unavailable.
Online Banking App and Banking App were online, but were experiencing slowness and intermittent availability.
Email Robin Caudell
Twitter:@RobinCaudell
