Last Saturday I drove from Dallas to Lubbock on what was perhaps one of the windiest days of the year. For those who don't know, there are hundreds of wind generators along that route around the Seymour area.

I drove back to Dallas on Wednesday, which may have been even more windy than Saturday was.

On both days, when the winds were very high and steady, I would estimate at least half if not more of the wind generators I saw were not moving.

We often joke about wind energy being dependent on the wind, but I believe the sadder joke is that even when it is windy, they aren't generating any electricity.

Can somebody explain why 50% or more of the wind generators aren't operating on the windiest of days? I could understand a handful being offline for maintenance, but not over half.

Tramp96 said:

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Last Saturday I drove from Dallas to Lubbock on what was perhaps one of the windiest days of the year. For those who don't know, there are hundreds of wind generators along that route around the Seymour area.

I drove back to Dallas on Wednesday, which may have been even more windy than Saturday was.

On both days, when the winds were very high and steady, I would estimate at least half if not more of the wind generators I saw were not moving.

We often joke about wind energy being dependent on the wind, but I believe the sadder joke is that even when it is windy, they aren't generating any electricity.

Can somebody explain why 50% or more of the wind generators aren't operating on the windiest of days? I could understand a handful being offline for maintenance, but not over half.

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Bc the objective of wind farms isn't to help solve grid problems. Wind farms are stood up to launder money to those who passed the bills that gave the projects money.

I do know that if wind gusts greater than some amount (I've read 50-55 mph), the turbines have an auto shutoff feature that will turn off the turbine. The higher speed can result in damage to the turbine itself.

The anemometer is located at the top of the turbine, so wind gusts are likely higher than they would be at ground level.

If half of the farm is down when it's normally running, that's my guess as to what happened.

because too high of winds can damage the gears and generator in the nacelle…operators can feather the blades and lock the brakes to avoid the damage to the equipment…

very high winds doesn't equate to very high energy production…

jrdaustin said:

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I do know that if wind gusts greater than some amount (I've read 50-55 mph), the turbines have an auto shutoff feature that will turn off the turbine. The higher speed can result in damage to the turbine itself.

The anemometer is located at the top of the turbine, so wind gusts are likely higher than they would be at ground level.

If half of the farm is down when it's normally running, that's my guess as to what happened.

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Only problem with that is one side of the road they were all running, and the other side of the road they weren't.

As someone who has lived in West Texas many years, I will say that if 50 mph gusts are bad for the turbines, then there is no point in putting wind generators in West Texas.

It could be due to mandated maintenance. I've never done business in that regard with wind farms, but I would assume they would do maintenance in reduced usage times like the winter months. Of course, you see lots that aren't turning in the summer as well.

Tramp96 said:

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jrdaustin said:

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I do know that if wind gusts greater than some amount (I've read 50-55 mph), the turbines have an auto shutoff feature that will turn off the turbine. The higher speed can result in damage to the turbine itself.

The anemometer is located at the top of the turbine, so wind gusts are likely higher than they would be at ground level.

If half of the farm is down when it's normally running, that's my guess as to what happened.

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Only problem with that is one side of the road they were all running, and the other side of the road they weren't.

As someone who has lived in West Texas many years, I will say that if 50 mph gusts are bad for the turbines, then there is no point in putting wind generators in West Texas.

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Oh there was always a point....

Especially when there were government programs that made the math work simply for building the wind farms rather than for running them.

Same thing with the wind farm in eastern McLennan County. On any given day less than 10 of them are running. I've been told by power company officials that it's bc the electricity isn't needed.

One of the biggest damn boondoggles in history.

deadhead aggie said:

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because too high of winds can damage the gears and generator in the nacelle…operators can feather the blades and lock the brakes to avoid the damage to the equipment…
very high winds doesn't equate to very high energy production…

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So your theory is that the wind was too extreme for half the turbines but fine for the rest? Give me a break. I live in the middle of a "wind farm". As someone noted previously, the whole industry is a scam without providing any benefit to the tax payer.

Just south of Bayside, heading into Corpus, there are several hundred of them. Complete eyesore and I agree, there are quite a few not even turning. Having grown up there, there is always wind. I do know they shut them down for bird migration and breeding season/hatching season.

I am going to go with maintenance as well. This things run on unicorn blood which has been at a shortage under Trump. That and eggs.

I know plenty of land owners in West Texas that are happy to put the turbines on their land. Easy money.

moses hall ag said:

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deadhead aggie said:

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because too high of winds can damage the gears and generator in the nacelle…operators can feather the blades and lock the brakes to avoid the damage to the equipment…
very high winds doesn't equate to very high energy production…

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So your theory is that the wind was too extreme for half the turbines but fine for the rest? Give me a break. I live in the middle of a "wind farm". As someone noted previously, the whole industry is a scam without providing any benefit to the tax payer.

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I'm no proponent of wind energy, but if the wind speeds were not too high, it might have been that the grid simply didn't need the wind farm running at 100% to meet the electric demand at that time.

Demand.

Some might be down for maintenance, some might be down for high winds, but demand is 90% of the equation.

When it's 100 degrees in Dallas, and everyone has their home and office ACs set to 55 degrees, the demand is there, and the turbines are running.

When electric demand is low, they aren't.

moses hall ag said:

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deadhead aggie said:

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because too high of winds can damage the gears and generator in the nacelle…operators can feather the blades and lock the brakes to avoid the damage to the equipment…
very high winds doesn't equate to very high energy production…

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So your theory is that the wind was too extreme for half the turbines but fine for the rest? Give me a break. I live in the middle of a "wind farm". As someone noted previously, the whole industry is a scam without providing any benefit to the tax payer.

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Easy there, jerky….i answered the question before he mentioned anything about "half the farm"…and what I provided wasn't a theory, it was a possible answer to a question…

as for half the farm being down, sounds like it could be maintenance to an entire string of turbines….possibly due to tie-in issues to the substation….but that, my friend, is just a theory….

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One of the biggest damn boondoggles in history.

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Doesnt matter the wind speeds....there are always 50% of them not running.

Swaths of West Texas looks like it's covered in ceiling fans connected by extension cords....and the environmentalists want to convince us it's good for the environment? It's destroyed the West Texas landscape we used to know.

I never appreciated the West Texas views...but I miss them now.

The wind farm on the north side of 82 west of Seymour has been offline for over a year. They are having to retrofit the elevator system in each one after an employee fell in one and f'd himself up pretty badly.

Those wind turbines are the biggest POS I've ever seen. Do nothing but leak hydraulic fluid constantly

Our current grid demands are today in winter about 2/3rds to half of what the peaks are in the summer.

It's ERCOTs job to make sure our power producing mix exactly matches the power consumption at every given moment and in reality we have excess generation capacity in the winter and barely enough for the hottest days of the year when power consumption is highest.

A wind farm not generating load in February isn't nearly the same problem as when a farm goes down in August.

And despite the anecdotal evidence of wind not generating in any given moment, ...as of the moment of this post per: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

Solar and wind make up just shy of 40% of total grid generation.

The rest is gas 40%, coal 13%, nuclear (8%), and a mix of hydro, battery, and other power sources for the remainders.

Really nothing about the wind farms equate to high energy production. It's a farce.

No...no...no. That's pixie dust and water.

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Can somebody explain why 50% or more of the wind generators aren't operating on the windiest of days? I could understand a handful being offline for maintenance, but not over half.

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democrat hoax

Today on Texags: dozens bewildered to learn every power plant ever constructed can't run at full capacity simultaneously

Predmid said:

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Our current grid demands are today in winter about 2/3rds to half of what the peaks are in the summer.

It's ERCOTs job to make sure our power producing mix exactly matches the power consumption at every given moment and in reality we have excess generation capacity in the winter and barely enough for the hottest days of the year when power consumption is highest.

A wind farm not generating load in February isn't nearly the same problem as when a farm goes down in August.

And despite the anecdotal evidence of wind not generating in any given moment, ...as of the moment of this post per: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

Solar and wind make up just shy of 40% of total grid generation.

The rest is gas 40%, coal 13%, nuclear (8%), and a mix of hydro, battery, and other power sources for the remainders.

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This is your answer.
While plenty of (valid) comments and personal opinion have been put forth in this thread the quote above is the correct answer to your question.

Thermal power can't be "completely" shut down on short intervals. You can throttle them way back, but you cannot flip them on and off. Saturday was a cool but relatively splendid day in Texas.

Nuclear runs at it's steady state
You keep the thermal power that isn't offline for prolonged maintenance going, but it's throttled as far back as you can if demand is low
Solar can't be turned off either and, again, it was a gorgeous weekend
You can turn the wind turbines on and off (when the wind is blowing) to rise and fall with demand through the day

Hate the wind turbines all you want, but on a temperate AND breezy day they can provide the adjustments needed as demand rises and falls through the daily cycle.

PS -- I hate them. They're ugly, they kill birds, and as another poster said they constantly leak hydraulic oil.

This is how it has been explained to me by a wind energy guy...

The grid needs to maintain power supply to meet whatever the demand is. You don't want to overcharge it, and you also don't want to undercharge it.

The wind generators are a small fraction of the available power, generally less that 15% to 20% of the total available for the grid.

The fossil fuel powerplants still provide the power to fill most of the grid demand. It is long process to bring a powerplant online or offline. So their schedules are pretty much set in stone.

Wind generators can be turned on or off with a mouse click.

So the wind generators are the "wiggle room" to keep the supply right on the demand.

Demand goes up, turn on 50 more wind generators. Demand goes down, turn off 75, etc.


And yes they shut down once wind speeds get too high.

And yes, they mostly exist so California tech companies can pretend to be carbon neutral...

Predmid said:

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Solar and wind make up just shy of 40% of total grid generation.

The rest is gas 40%, coal 13%, nuclear (8%), and a mix of hydro, battery, and other power sources for the remainders.

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I just looked at the current production chart from ercot.

Solar and wind are combining for 23,468 MW, out of 169,071 MW...just over 13%

But the question isn't how much capacity, it's the efficiency of that production. If you produce a crap-ton of inefficient energy, what's the benefit? We need a lot more nuclear.

Electric power generators must also honor the terms of the contracts they have with the various Retail Electric Providers and if they are they are at the high end of the pricing ladder, they are the first to get turned off.

As someone who gets a wind check, I can tell you that I'm not a fan of wind energy. Our extended family put together a wind project on some land where we only owned a small portion. We ended up trading that land for some other land on our main ranch, but kept the wind rights, so we get a wind check without having our land burdened by wind turbines. Best of both worlds for us.

Our wind project was initially built by a major oil company, but, about 10-12 years after initial construction, the wind turbines were becoming obsolete and we ended up getting paid the minimum guaranteed royalties each year. The original owner sold to a smaller outfit, who retrofitted the turbines with new generators in 2020. Lucky for us, the new generators, unlike the old one, were equipped to operate in extreme cold, so when the big freeze hit in 2021, our wind farm was one of only a few that was able to operate and sell electricity at extremely high rates (we made as much in one quarter as we had the past 3 years combined). Yet another case, in addition to the high wind problem cited above, where you'd think wind energy could contribute, but didn't.

There are a lot of times where there simply isn't enough demand, and the wind farm shuts down totally or partially. And the older projects are nearing the end of their useful life, so they are frequently shut down for maintenance. That's the downside from the operator perspective.

But, as for the electricity customers of the state, let me say that we'd be better off with no wind power as opposed to the level we have right now. Having too much wind power depresses the price that baseload generation operators can charge, and makes them less likely to build new generation capacity. That's one big reason why we have been walking a tightrope so much in the last few years. The real crime was spending a billion dollars to build new transmission lines to the panhandle (which is not on the ERCOT grid) just to permit wind projects out there to tie into ERCOT.

The wind farm cited by the OP near Seymour probably ties into transmission lines built by West Texas Utilities to get power from their old coal fired plant at Oklaunion to the Abilene area. Our wind farm ties into a line that runs from a gas plant at Graham to Wichita Falls. These kind of wind projects at least utilized existing lines. But the wind farms you see out in the panhandle were only possible because of the new transmission lines that Rick Perry pushed. That was a really bad idea.

Why have wind generators in West Texas?

It's windy enough without them.

gkaggie08 said:

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The wind farm on the north side of 82 west of Seymour has been offline for over a year. They are having to retrofit the elevator system in each one after an employee fell in one and f'd himself up pretty badly.

Those wind turbines are the biggest POS I've ever seen. Do nothing but leak hydraulic fluid constantly

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Yeah, the leaky hydraulic fluid was very noticeable. I don't think I saw a single one whose nacelle exterior wasn't rust colored.

The daily demand curve for electricity is basically a one or two humped camel, and can easily be predicted based on the projected temperatures for the day.

The daily windspeed curve looks basically like Brownian motion.

The only way for wind to be useful is to have significant over capacity, or even more significant generation storage through chemical or physical batteries.

What you are likely seeing is capacity that can't be sold.

Obligatory.

CanyonAg77 said:

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Demand.

Some might be down for maintenance, some might be down for high winds, but demand is 90% of the equation.

When it's 100 degrees in Dallas, and everyone has their home and office ACs set to 55 degrees, the demand is there, and the turbines are running.

When electric demand is low, they aren't.

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