As far as people here wondering why the Wind Producers going off-line in the winter and not in the summer when usage between the two times are roughly the same during peak, it isn't simply the cold that is the problem. It's the ice build up on the wind vanes. The diameter of that much spinning mass being that imbalanced with uneven ice buildup will destroy the rotating mass in very short order. Only answer is stop rotation and de-ice vanes. The principle of balanced rotating mass and ice build up has been a problem since the beginning of time with rotating air moving vane props be it cooling tower fans, Wind Generating Turbines or anything else such as this. If someone here has a fix for this, they are sitting on a Goldmine. Believe me, the Wind Turbine operators will pay you what ever you want for that fix. I've worked at a 1640MW Generating plant for 20 years. We still use coal fired boilers at our plant, but the company use Combined Technology Turbines, Solar Grids and Hydro plants also. We have stayed away from Wind Turbines to this point because the massive failure self destruct tendencies of vanes in our climate here in KY. That is why they are in Texas and West Coast more so than East Coast. And as far as Coal plants being Peaking Plants, ain't gonna happen. It takes three days to get a cold boiler up to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and 2500 psi without destroying it. Our boiler tubes grow about 12" in 14 stories of height and our high presser part or the turbine grows over six inches in length and slides on a sliding base to accommodate that. Spinning sections have to be aligned "cold" as much as .250" vertically to accommodate growth in height between turbines and generators when fully "heat" saturated. The Grid Management Alphabet agencies that oversee the grid day to day operations is almost Nazi oriented in power. Unbelievable how much power they have grown into, we hardly have any say in planning maintenance and outages anymore because of the way the Grid is managed now.
