Reposted from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Just to follow up yesterday’s post on the Texas grid, here are two charts for the US as a whole.
The first show how total demand rose by more than 100GW during the cold spell just before Christmas.
The second illustrates how wind power halved in the space of 24 hours at the same time:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/US48/US48
This destroys the idea that the wind is always blowing somewhere, and that all you have to do is distribute surplus power around the country in order to meet demand.
And without gas or some other dispatchable source, how would that loss of wind power and surge in demand have been met?