re: Wind Power Production Drops Despite 6.2GW of Added Capacity

It mostly only applies to an argument for 100% wind and solar or in an over saturated market which only exists in one place, Hawaii. But there is a straight up lie about taxes because those are in the o&m build up. There’s also a graph that has $300+ for solar “fuel”. I really hope he didn’t post that with a straight face.

I’m actually curious if the authors wrote that article so people would use it and look retarded.

“Windmills kill all your birds” - the greatest President in American history who many people say was also the handsomest.

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Think about rolling blackouts. They perform these when the systems are stressed to the max due to demand, weather, combination of both at times, EVEN WITH renewables entering the grid.

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Most times, rolling blackouts have more to do with N-1 scenarios in combination with demand/weather. The country is separated in to 3 large "grids" (eastern interconnect, western interconnect, and Texas interconnect, yes they have their own) each with their own set of issues. But even deeper than that, each territory is separated by independent system operators (9 total that actually go into Canada) that study scenarios in real-time and future, for planned outages. If they see a problem, or potential problem, the line is not take down.

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If utilities had substations sized more capably, more modern transmission lines with less losses, more integrated storage systems, they could take in more generation and distribute, causing less stress on the systems, removing the need for a rolling blackout.

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Transmission lines are what carry voltage to substation transformers. They don't "take in generation". They serve load. I'm curious as to what you think a "modern transmission line" is. There isn't a technology that magically makes transmission lines have less losses. Its about wire size and distance. That's it. The bigger the wire, the higher the amperage capacity it can take and the further it can carry voltage without substantial loss.. However, the higher the voltage, the lower the amperage that is carried. Thus the need for transmission.

I'm not sure how integrated storage systems help in a potential blackout situation so I'm open to hearing your thoughts on that.

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EVEN WITH renewables entering the grid.

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Think about this for a minute. We have load capacity. We put more with renewables, unless they are taking units offline in conjunction with the renewables coming online. Why would that cause rolling blackouts? It doesn't. The only time I've ever been asked to shed load in a blackout situation was because there was a transmission line loss (N-1), and the capacity that the down line would usually take, has to pass on other lines, thus putting them at risk of overload. I have never shed load due to a substation transformer's limitations, a distribution line's limitations, or even a sub-transmission line's (34.5 kv - 69 kv) limitation.

Utility infrastructure as a whole is a completely different topic. The aging infrastructure doesn't necessarily translate to lower capacity. I'm more concerned about hardware availability, distribution transformer lead times, power transformer lead times (a typical 20MVA used to be 20-24 week and are now at 2-3 years), and pole availability as nothing comes within a reasonable time anymore. This puts a strain on restoration efforts. So, every utility over orders which exasperates the problem even further with no end in sight. So, even if we wanted to upgrade infrastructure, we don't have the supply chain to support it. Even then, it wouldn't guarantee that a rolling blackout wouldn't happen.

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This is largely what is happening. Old coal plants are being retired and replaced with intermittent renewables that are not dispatchable. It largely hasn't affected Louisiana yet but the next step is retirement of natural gas plants if they cannot capture most of their emissions. The old coal plants are slowly being strangled by the regulations forcing the shutdowns.

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You are right that it hasn't hit Louisiana yet. But plenty of utilities have began to build large solar farms. Multiple farms of 150 to 200 MW in the mid-south of Louisiana. I'm pretty sure there were a few threads about it on here at the time. As far as I know, nothing has been decommissioned. Lafayette removed 3 very old steam power units but you couldn't even purchase parts for them and this happened long before solar was a thing in this area. They are building combined cycle units in their place and should be starting soon.

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Last spring, the members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had chilling words for the Senate: America is losing reliable power plants, building unreliable ones, and heading towards a reliability crisis. “The red lights are flashing and there is no excuse not to see them,” said Commissioner Mark Christie, adding, “I believe it is my duty as a member of FERC to call attention to the serious threat to reliability that is looming on the horizon.” If the Senate listened, the Environmental Protection Agency did not, opting to make the problem worse.

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This is concerning because its true. The push for renewables that can't be dispatched on need is a drum that FERC should keep beating. Not that government will listen.

Distribution transformer manufacturers have been petitioning DEQ to stop raising efficiency standards as it increases the amount of core steel in each unit, which is a huge part of the supply chain issue. Again, not that they will listen.

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Who knew production would depend on something like....wind blowing a lot

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Wind blowing a lot?!?

Sounds like Washington DC would be the most desirable piece of ground for this technology. Nothing but worthless souls flapping their gums in every direction at the same time.