Fossil fuel helicopter saves the day after windmill blades freeze in Texas

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A fossil fuel helicopter saved the day after the windmill blades froze and left 1.3 million electric customers in Texas without power. Rolling blackouts continued through the next day and it continues still.

Fossil fuel helicopters sprayed chemicals to unfreeze them.

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.

It was a unique storm, however.

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.


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JP Maxwell
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JP Maxwell
3 years ago

This story is complete BS. Wind turbines are specifically designed to operate in all climates and endure snow and ice while operating normally in such conditions. There is another reason Texas is cutting its power. Wind turbines operate in the harshest environments. This story is fabricated disinformation.

GuvGeek
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GuvGeek
3 years ago
Reply to  JP Maxwell

One thing Wind Turbines can’t deal with is freezing rain. The amount of energy to keep them from freezing in freezing rain conditions would be many times what they can produce.

guidvce4
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guidvce4
3 years ago

Another fine example of the fallacy of relying on “sustainable” green energy. Which is nowhere close to being as reliable as the good ole’ “fossil fuel” sources of energy. Add that to the facts that it takes old fashioned sources of energy such as coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro plants to fire up the manufacturing plants to build the wind and solar components in the first place, and the hypocrisy is starkly apparent.
Time to really put the lid on this farce of green energy. Its nothing more than another leftist scam to get the folks dependent on the government for everything. Who’s gonna control the sources? Government and their lackeys, that’s who.
Just sayin’.

Show me
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Show me
3 years ago

That looks extremely risky, spraying deicer on wind turbine blades.
It’s not worth going down.
If they could do it without risk, that would be one thing, but hovering in a helicopter spraying wind turbine blades, you couldn’t pay me enough.

Smitty
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Smitty
3 years ago
Reply to  Show me

If it were easy, Hooters girls and Accountants would all be doing it. Some things cant be done without risk.

Clifford Spencer
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Clifford Spencer
3 years ago
Reply to  Show me

If that makes you nervous, you’d lose your mind if you ever saw them replace insulators from a hovering helicopter.
The guys flying those helicopters are among the best in the world.

Rainbow Stew Bubble Up
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Rainbow Stew Bubble Up
3 years ago

Fourteen inches of globull warming since 6AM! It is a thick powdery snow and now there is some traction on the glacier sidewalks.
A neighbor has in home nursing care who work in shifts and the day nurse had to shovel a clearing in order to park.
A private contractor has removed some snow since we have no through streets and the city won’t send any trucks.
We are just on the border of the county where Capital City is located and a travel warning was declared just in time for rush hour.
The next county over has declared a snow emergency and officers have discretion to stop and tell you to get off the streets.
How about that God and Lady Nature.