Adding ‘unreliable’ wind, solar is ‘at the expense of the reliables’

By Juliette Fairley. Houston Republic

Taxpayer subsidies paid to wind and solar developers contributed to the grid nearing emergency conditions this week, according to an oil and gas expert.

“That’s part of it,” Robert Bradley, CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research, said. “We get a lot of generation we don’t need just because the tax breaks are so great, and when you keep adding the so-called unreliables, it’s at the expense of the reliables. They’re the most expensive to build but the least expensive to dispatch.” 

Other than mild weather and normally scheduled or expected outages, April 13, was a normal day until Texas’ grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, sent an appeal for Texans to conserve electricity use because of allegedly near emergency conditions, according to media reports.

“Conventional generators are very thin right now because Texas has gone to so many renewables,” Bradley told the Houston Republic. “The way the pricing is set up, renewables are advantaged and baseload generation is not. So, we haven’t had much new capacity with the baseload generators, which gets back to government policy, forced renewables and de-carbonization of the grid.”

According to ERCOT system conditions data, the wind hit its peak generation of almost 17,000 MW the next day on April 13 at 1 a.m. Wind generation subsequently dropped to about 5,000 MW during the daily periods of regular increased demand. Even the 5,000 MW, wind generation for April 13 was 3,000 MW less than what was forecasted.

“We need a lot less wind and a lot more natural gas and even coal,” Bradley said in an interview. 

Read the rest of the article at the Houston Republic