February 16, 2021 01:46 PM UTC

Deep Thoughts By Lauren Boebert: "Frozen Windmills"

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• by: Colorado Pols

The arctic blast of cold air that dunked temperatures along the Front Range below well zero has caused big problems down in Texas where this kind of cold is decades-apart infrequent. Learning of major power shortages that have become prolonged power outages in Texas yesterday, Colorado’s Rep. Lauren Boebert did what she does best–swung into half-cocked action on Twitter.

Rolling blackouts from ND to TX have turned into lengthy power outages in freezing conditions.

Biden needs to lift his oil & gas ban as we need reliable energy sources.

The Green New Deal was just proven unsustainable as renewables are clearly unreliable.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) February 16, 2021

You know how you unfreeze frozen windmills?

By sending up a helicopter that shoots out chemicals onto the blades.

You need fuel for the helicopter.

Keep that in mind when thinking how “green” windmills are.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) February 16, 2021

But is it true? As Bloomberg News reports, not so much:

While ice has forced some turbines to shut down just as a brutal cold wave drives record electricity demand, that’s been the least significant factor in the blackouts, according to Dan Woodfin, a senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid.

The main factors: Frozen instruments at natural gas, coal and even nuclear facilities, as well as limited supplies of natural gas, he said. “Natural gas pressure” in particular is one reason power is coming back slower than expected Tuesday, added Woodfin. [Pols emphasis]

“We’ve had some issues with pretty much every kind of generating capacity in the course of this multi-day event,” he said.

As anyone who knows about oil and gas production in cold regions of the country can tell you, temperatures below the design rating of gas wellheads can cause them to freeze precisely when consumers need BTUs most. When a warm climate like Texas is flash-frozen by an arctic cold front, all kinds of things that are supposed to work stop working, including energy infrastructure both clean and dirty. As it turns out, when “the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow,” sometimes the gas doesn’t flow either.

In the case of wind turbines, it’s a question of what they’re engineered to withstand. Wind turbines designed for use in Antarctica, for example, naturally have more protection against ice and extreme cold than wind turbines in Texas.

Wind shutdowns accounted for 3.6 to 4.5 gigawatts — or less than 13% — of the 30 to 35 gigawatts of total outages, according to Woodfin. That’s in part because wind only comprises 25% of the state’s energy mix this time of year.

Again, this is the information you look for if your goal is to actually understand what is happening. That is simply not Rep. Boebert’s priority in these situations. Hearing that windmills were icing up in Texas provided the launching point for misinformation Boebert already had ready to go, and the facts of the matter are only there to get in the way.