There is much talk about what is to blame for the disaster that has been Texas this week. Many are blaming the state's move toward renewables. Others say that gas pipes froze and not to blame green energy. Well, let's check out the data. I found the ERCOT website with a nice spreadsheet for the variation in power from each source. Click here if you want to download it too. All those windmills froze and the power provided dropped from a peak of 9,101 Megawatt/hours (MWh) to a low of 649 MWh. That sounds pretty bad. However, at most, wind power only provides around 16% of the state's energy. The average for this week was 8%. On the other hand, there is natural gas. It had a peak this week of 43,967 MWh but dropped as low as 25,964 MWh. That's a precipitous drop, especially since natural gas is far and away the primary source of energy for the state (over 60% on average). Sure, percentage-wise, wind dropped by 93% but that's only 8.500 MWh. Natural gas saw an 18,000 MWh gap from its peak. Based on the data, blaming the windmills doesn't stand up. This is a system-wide failure though there are sure to be calls to shake up the grid based on the politics (fossil fuels vs. green energy) rather than the data.
Though I'm no fan of windmills for energy production, they are not the exclusive culprit - as some have painted - for the current crisis.
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