The statistics I saw were the windmills produce 42% of the energy. When they froze up it dropped to 8%. There were some other power plants that froze up. And the energy produced from solar arrays was virtually nonexistent with the snow on them.
A perfect storm (pun intended)!
Wind
doesn't produce 45% of the energy, wind
can produce up to 45% of the energy depending on load for short durations.
These distinctions are always left out.
There is currently ~32,000 MW of wind installed in Texas. Texas demand last week jumped to 72,000+MW which is a high summer peak.
On 1/14/21 wind produced 22,893 at 7:27 am. The demand was only 50,379 MW at the same time. Ta da 45 percent. What they forget to mention is the wind changes throughout the day. They can't force it to be 45%.
In January the peak demand for electricity was 55,426 MW and at the peak demand, wind was 6,634 MW of that; or 12%.
In summer those percentages swing but are lower because demand is higher. So you get more like 22/72 and 7/72.
Since you can't force the wind to blow, anymore then solar can force the sun to be up at night, there's always a chance of coming up way short no matter how much you add. 100,000 MW of wind may give you 10,000 MW when you need 72,000 or might give you 80,000 MW when you need 30,000 MW. Its worse during the day when its numbers rise and fall quickly when your demand is constant.
Fossil fuels, nuclear, and even hydro, are stored energy that can be released on a set schedule.
The more we rely on large scale wind and solar, the less stable power will become. Due to the huge swings in output that occur whenever they occur, not whenever you need it or don't need it.
