Texas Grid Operator: ‘Frozen Wind Turbines Caused Power Outages’

As large regions in the United States suffer record-breaking freezes, some states, like Texas, have been unable to provide power and heating to residents. Many are left wondering: how did this happen?

As expected, the issue has become politicized, as Biden surrogates and climate change campaigners are scrambling on mainstream media, and on social media, in an effort to try and control the narrative and divert the conversation away from the actual cause of the grid’s failure: the collapse of the state’s so-called ‘sustainable’ green energy initiative.

Thus far, the failure has already cost lives, with 22 dead already, and counting.

Update: Texas electric grid operators have launched rotating blackouts across the state after power demand reached an all-time high. 

Despite Democrat activist claims that the power failures have ‘nothing to with wind turbines,’ the facts tell another story.

“This record cold is not only compelling customers to increase their power usage to stay warm, it’s also icing wind turbines and straining our natural-gas powered resources,” said Commissioner Arthur D’Andrea

He added, “ERCOT has called upon power consumers across the grid to reduce their electricity use as much as possible from Sunday, February 14, to Tuesday, February 16.”

“We are experiencing record-breaking electric demand due to the extreme cold temperatures that have gripped Texas … At the same time, we are dealing with higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines.”

The Austin American Statesman reports…

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.

Fortunately for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s electric grid, the storm’s gusty winds are spinning the state’s unfrozen coastal turbines at a higher rate than expected, helping to offset some of the power generation losses because of the icy conditions.

“This is a unique winter storm that’s more widespread with lots of moisture in West Texas, where there’s a lot of times not a lot of moisture,” said Dan Woodfin, Senior Director of System Operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. “It’s certainly more than what we would typically assume.”

SEE ALSO: Green Energy’s Epic Failure in Texas: Record-breaking Freeze Disables ‘Sustainable’ Grid

Wind power has been the fastest-growing source of energy in Texas’ power grid. In 2015 winder power generation supplied 11% of Texas’ energy grid. Last year it supplied 23% and overtook coal as the system’s second-largest source of energy after natural gas.

In Austin, wind power supplies roughly 19% of the city’s energy demands, all of which is passed from producers to consumers across the state grid. The city began adding several megawatts of wind energy capacity to its renewable energy portfolio in the 1990s from both West Texas and Gulf Coast wind farms.

The frozen turbines come as low temperatures strain the state’s power grid and force operators to call for immediate statewide conservation efforts, like unplugging non-essential appliances, turning down residential heaters and minimize use of electric lighting.

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