I know others have mentioned this but to make it explicit: the idea that the wind turbines are responsible for the outages is both false, and being widely spread intentionally to increase public distrust of renewable energy. I'm not suggesting you're doing that, but you should be aware.
Text quoted as a public policy PSA, if you want to see the full story and picture the link is above.
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"In Texas today... a helicopter, using fossil fuels, spraying de-icer, made with fossil fuels, to de-ice a wind turbine, manufactured using fossil fuels, that is supposed to produce clean energy without using fossil fuels," one Facebook post says.
But the picture actually shows ice being removed from a wind turbine in Sweden, using hot water.
BBC News traced the image back to a 2016 report published by Swedish company Alpine Helicopter, demonstrating "airborne de-icing solutions" for wind turbines.
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This bit is true, though, and they are also erected and maintained using fossil fuels (among other things). That much should be obvious, and pretending that this insight is somehow a new or shocking idea is over the top pretentious.
There are people full time doing lifetime analyses on these things, and have been for several decades. This is engineering people doing engineering work. Anyone can read these reports and find out exactly where the break even points are.
This is taken into account when planning large infrastructure projects like wind power parks.
The inflammatory wording of the source misinformation was designed to elicit exactly such a response.
Probably some hydrocarbons are presently used as lubricants or plastics somewhere in the design, but those needn't be the long term portions of it, and the energy supplied to forge and shape the materials and components could be provided by anything feeding the grid.
