Turbines Freeze Up in Texas Cold Snap – Shutting Down Nearly Half of the Wind Energy in West Texas
A winter storm is causing chaos in Texas. Power outages were initiated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas early on Monday morning. This means hundreds of thousands of Texans are without electricity for short periods of time. Temperatures fell into the teens near Dallas and 20s around Houston.
Nearly half of the wind turbines in the state of Texas froze in recent winter weather, hurting state power supplies, according to state authorities.
The Austin American-Statesman reported Sunday:
Nearly half of Texas’ installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.
Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend’s freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.
As of Sunday morning, those iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas’ installed wind generation capacity, although those West Texas turbines don’t typically spin to their full generation capacity this time of year.