Texas wind power shows obvious shortcomings

LINK HERE

The source? Reuters, so it is fairly reliable.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday.

Many people look favorably on wind power generation but some times the wind ceases to blow. This cannot possibly be the future of power when it can stop on a dime. How can we produce goods, and maintain infrastructure if the power can go off if the weather changes?

Why is America afraid of nuclear power? E=mc^2 can yield tremendous power, we just have to build on the technologies that our European friends have developed across the pond.

One word.

Waste.

I don't know that I'm speaking for the general public, but this is a problem that has yet to be satisfactorily addressed.

We have waste disposal sites here in New Mexico in abandoned mines and such, but let's face it.

That is literally sweeping the dirt under the rug.

No one can blame the Florida power outage on the failure of wind power.

www.foxnews.com...

Wind is just one source and even with redundant systems, sometimes things go wrong.


[edit on 2008/2/28 by GradyPhilpott]

reply to post by GradyPhilpott

Ditto!
Also, years ago a retired nuclear energy engineer was telling me with waxing eagerness about his industry. Then he sighed and said that the only thing bad about it was the problem with waste storage. Hmmm...to me that seemed like a big problem.

reply to post by DINSTAAR

System operators curtailed power to interruptible customers to shave 1,100 megawatts of demand within 10 minutes, ERCOT said. Interruptible customers are generally large industrial customers who are paid to reduce power use when emergencies occur.

Well doesn't seem like much harm was done.

Solar power tends to be complementary to wind;[attribution needed][20][21] on most days with no wind there is sun and on most days with no sun there is wind.

wikipedia

Maybe they just need some more solar power to compliment the wind projects.