This page gives some information about the ERCOT (most of Texas) electricity grid, covering the region of North America shown in the following map:
The ERCOT grid has a large and still growing (as of 2021) amount of wind power, and it may provide lessons for other grids following a similar path. Hourly data on supply and demand can be obtained from the following website:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/ERCO
The ERCOT grid has (2018) a poor record of reliability, and therefore deserves analysis to understand why:
The source of the figure above is TBD.
Several variability studies have been published in recent (circa 2019) years, but they tend to avoid doing any lull analysis, an exception being one from the energy and environment group at Princeton University, who produced the following plot of total hourly wind power for 2016:
Professsor Socolow of Princeton makes the point, probably very important, that wind power lulls should be given names similar to what is done for hurricanes, given the amount of destruction that they may create via local blackouts and regional system-blacks.
Several deep wind power lulls in ERCOT are shown in an analysis from NERL, an example of which is shown in the following figure:
Further discussion and proper identification of sources will follow.
climanrecon 