Does Wind Turbine Winterization Make Sense in Texas?
After the Feb. 2021 ice disaster in Texas and the resulting fallout on ERCOT, a lot of scrutiny has been given to the notion of wind turbine winterization. Although cold-weather issues with the natural gas system caused the bulk of the problems in Texas, an initial wave of false accusations directed toward the state’s wind power sources have fueled a narrative that wind turbine winterization would have helped. But is that really true?
Pros and Cons of Wind Turbine Winterization
Texas has over 13,000 wind turbines in operation, and a number of them experienced ice build-up during the event, requiring them to temporarily shut down. Because the turbine operators in the state have no incentive to winterize, they chose the path of least resistance – they did nothing to winterize the turbines in advance.
The thing is, it’s not particularly expensive or difficult to winterize wind turbines. There are two methods – an “active system” which proactively heats the blades, and a “reactive system” which applies a coating to help prevent ice from building up. In addition, cold weather packages that protect components like the gearbox and motors can be purchased.
Turbine operators in Canada perform many of these winterization tasks, and this allows the turbines there to reliably operate at temperatures as cold as minus-22 Fahrenheit. That said, it’s still not exactly a no-brainer for the Texas operators because it’s been smooth sailing for the last 20 years.
According to a reference in the article linked-to above, it costs about 5-10% more to operate a wind farm that has been winterized compared to one that has not. Definitely not a token amount! From a pure numbers’ standpoint, this makes wind turbine winterization a worthwhile investment if severe icing is expected 3 times in the turbine’s lifetime.
Those numbers do not seem to add up in Texas though. That said, from a human standpoint, no one ever wants to see a repeat of what happened in Texas, so when viewed through that lens even a single occurrence is too many.
Perhaps a decent middle ground would be to require wind turbine winterization in Texas, but do so only utilizing the most economical solution available. No matter how this turns out, I’m sure it will be an interesting journey before all is said and done.
