{"id":67806,"date":"2024-05-02T18:05:01","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T23:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67806"},"modified":"2024-05-02T18:05:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-02T23:05:01","slug":"build-it-and-the-wind-wont-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67806","title":{"rendered":"Build It, And The Wind Won\u2019t Come"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Build It, And The Wind Won\u2019t Come<\/a><\/h3>\n

Weather-dependent generation sources are…weather dependent: Last year, despite adding 6.2 GW of new capacity, U.S. wind production dropped by 2.1%.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Damaged wind turbines at the Punta Lima wind project, Naguabo, Puerto Rico, 2018. Photo:\u00a0Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Three years ago, in the wake of Winter Storm Uri, the alt-energy lobby and their many allies in the media made sure not to blame wind energy for the Texas blackouts. The American Clean Power Association (2021 revenue: $32.1 million<\/a>) declared frozen wind turbines \u201cdid not cause the Texas power outages<\/a>\u201d because they were \u201cnot the primary cause of the blackouts. Most of the power that went offline was powered by gas or coal.\u201d<\/p>\n

NPR parroted that line, claiming, \u201cBlaming wind and solar is a political move<\/a>.\u201d The\u00a0Texas Tribune<\/em>\u00a0said it was wrong to blame alt-energy after Winter Storm Uri because \u201cwind power was expected to make up\u00a0only a fraction\u00a0of what the state had planned for<\/a>\u00a0during the winter.\u201d The outlet also quoted one academic who said that natural gas was \u201cfailing in the most spectacular fashion right now.\u201d\u00a0Texas Tribune<\/em>\u00a0went on to explain, \u201cOnly 7% of ERCOT\u2019s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, there was no reason to expect the\u00a033 GW of wind capacity that Texas had<\/a>\u00a0to deliver because, you know, no one expected wind energy to produce much power. Expectations?\u00a0Mr. October?<\/a>\u00a0Playoff Jamal?<\/a>\u00a0Who needs them?<\/p>\n

But what happens when you build massive amounts of wind energy capacity and it doesn\u2019t deliver \u2014 not for a day or a week, but for six months, or even an entire year? T…<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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Build It, And The Wind Won\u2019t Come Weather-dependent generation sources are…weather dependent: Last year, despite adding 6.2 GW of new capacity, U.S. wind production dropped by 2.1%. Damaged wind turbines at the Punta Lima wind project, Naguabo, Puerto Rico, 2018. Photo:\u00a0Wikipedia. Three years ago, in the wake of Winter Storm Uri, the alt-energy lobby and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[33927,24859,34456,34455,7261,2654,998],"class_list":["post-67806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-non-renewable-renewable-energy-harvesting-technology","tag-robert-bryce","tag-weather-changes","tag-weather-dependency","tag-wind","tag-wind-power","tag-wind-turbines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67807,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67806\/revisions\/67807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}