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Comment by jweir | Hacker News Reader

Correct. The summer of 2019 was no wind. Today’s problem is ice.

I'm guessing ice is such a rare problem the turbines in Texas aren't equipped to handle it. Not that turbines can't de-ice themselves, right? Surely if they can operate in the North Sea, they can operate in West and South Texas, yeah?

I am not familiar with turbine technology. But I do know wind farms is ISO-NE (New England) have shutdown from ice. Just a quick bit of reading describes the challenges - historically the solutions have been expensive and not very good. One article said there is some promising new technology.

Here is that article (or press release - I know nothing of the source)

https://www.windpowerengineering.com/the-cold-hard-truth-abo...

Perhaps there is an unhappy middle temperature where ice forms more easily? I know some people from the northern US that moved to Texas and were mocking how slowly they drove in the snow. Until they had a close call and realized the barely freezing weather makes for worse ice sheets.

Central Texas has been getting a lot of freezing rain this weekend, as opposed to outright snow or sleet. I know this has caused a lot of power line and tree damage (because it causes water to cling to trees and freeze into ice, whereas snow doesn’t accumulate as much on trees). I would imagine freezing rain would have similar effects on wind turbines.

Austin TX here, it's the most bizarre thing I've seen. All trees, all objects, have a thin (couple mms) shell of clear ice. Evenly distributed all the way around, and then icicles on the bottom. It all appeared that first day (Thursday?) when we first had freezing temperatures and there was moderate rain at the same time. All of the trees are sagging, several branches have fallen just within the view of my house.

Walking around my yard this evening and the green vegetation that froze over crunched like potato chips. I'm from the Midwest so familiar with the cold, but I had never experienced that sensation before.

Freezing rain usually occurs when you have an inversion aloft, resulting in above freezing temperatures over sub freezing temps, along with precipitation. The snow that falls melts, then chills down as it goes through the cold near surface layer. So when it hits an object, it freezes on contact.

For this to occur, you need temps to be pretty close to freezing, as if it's too warm, or won't refreeze, and too cold, it never melts to rain.

According to this article[1] you can equip them with cold weather packages that will allow them to operate down to -30C. I am guessing they wouldn't install those packages on turbines in Texas

[1] https://energynews.us/2019/02/27/midwest/wind-turbine-shutdo...

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