With Texas the largest producer of wind energy in the United States, this was a great test of the technology’s resilience. Harvey plowed directly into a number of Texas wind farms as it came ashore and all survived the pummeling as wind gusts exceeded 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour. The turbines were not damaged. The grid, however, took a beating, meaning transmission of the electricity generated by the wind farms is currently off line until repairs can be made.
During the peak of the hurricane, wind farms were able to temporarily idle turbines to ensure they remained secure and safe. Although this temporarily reduced wind power by 800 megawatts at the height of the storm, none were damaged, and they were ready to generate electricity after the initial onslaught of severe winds. Only transmission infrastructure damage kept them from providing needed electricity to a battered state.
An interesting comparison can be made regarding the resilience of wind farms versus that of the fossil-fuel infrastructure found along the same coast where Harvey came ashore. The environmental impact of the storm, now that it has passed, is still being assessed, but currently, Texas’ refineries and chemical plants are in a mess with sewage overflows, numerous spills and leaks, and in one case a chemical plant that experienced an explosion and fire.
In total, more than 30 leaks had been reported as of August 30th. These include:
According to Environment Texas spokesperson, Luke Metzger, “people are already being exposed to cancer-causing chemicals.”
Since August 30th, Harvey has continued to dump rain onto existing fossil fuel infrastructure delaying the checking of refineries and delaying any attempts at restarts. There is continued concern that storage tank infrastructure has been damaged by rising floodwaters leading to pipeline breaks. Restarting the pumping of refinery products into these tanks may expose more leaks and spills.
The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) of the United States has issued a warning to all oil and chemical processing facilities to ensure extra caution is applied to any facility restarts in anticipation that the flooding will create further damage.
For wind energy, Harvey has been a test to prove the resilience of this technology. It comes just a few days after solar energy infrastructure was tested by the solar eclipse, the latter seen as a potential Achilles heel for that renewable energy technology. But both have come through with flying colours.
On June 21 the United Kingdom with 4.7 Gigawatts of installed solar farms, solar panels on buildings, and solar on residential homes, generated 8% of total electricity demand in a 24 hour period. That represented a new record for the country. The UK is on course to double solar capacity over the next year and then again with a goal to achieve between 30 and 40% of total electricity generated during peak summer months.
Meanwhile in Germany, with over 1.4 million solar installations across the country, a peak of 23.1 Gigawatts of power was generated during the noon hour on June 9. This represented 50.6% of the total demand. Germany continues to invest heavily in solar with growth of 34% in capacity through the first half of 2014.
Meanwhile the Lone Star state of Texas during the month of March of this year generated almost 10,300 Megawatts of electricity through wind turbines, supplying 29% of the load on the grid. Texas operates a self-contained power grid to provide power to about 85% of the state’s customers. Texas has the largest installed based of wind turbines in the United States with over 12,000 Megawatts of capacity with plans to add 7,000 Megawatts currently under construction. A Megawatt is enough power to provide light and heat to 300 homes. So at 10,300 Megawatts we are talking about power to only 3,090,000 homes out of a total of more than 8.8 million. That’s twice the wind capacity of California, currently considered the greenest U.S. state in terms of policies related to carbon reduction. And when you consider that Texas is also the “Big Oil” state, the attention to wind power seems incongruous but very much welcome.
