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Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

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Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#101

Post by radicalbyte »

briandear wrote: post #98
radicalbyte wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why inland wind is basically banned in the UK. I totally understand the argument and if it wasn't for the fact that the climate disaster will end us I would agree. However what 2+ degrees of warming will do will dwarf anything that the turbines will do. There are also arguments about birds dying and the such. Only that's a BS argument considering that glass buildings kill 10x as many birds and are ubiquitous.

So why not do nuclear?

It's too expensive to do now and has been killed in the past by the same NIMBY. Given the impact of failure I actually understand the NIMBY in relation to nuclear.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#102

Post by marvin »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #82
erikpukinskis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ICE auto industry is well aware that it’s game over for all but maybe one or two of them who can survive the transition to electric+autonomy. It behooves the others to try to minimize expenses and ride the company into the ground. Basically, revenue is going to zero so they want to maximize profits in what’s left of this little corner of the curve. Lowering emissions standards, even for 5 years, let’s them squeez…

What sort of bleeds through the electronic industry trade magazines is the auto industry despite what they might say publicly knows electrification is coming. You can tell that because what their suppliers are doing.

Do you have an example of this? I find this fascinating.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#103

Post by vkou »

H8crilA wrote: post #96
adrianN wrote: post #10

How difficult is it to build transmission lines in the US? In Germany we have enormous problems building a transmission line from the offshore windparks in the north to the industrial centers in the south. NIMBYs are opposing it fiercly.

The US has much lower population concentration, for example Texas: 40/km2, Germany: 230/km2. It makes it so much easier to build pipelines and power lines. It also makes it much less profitable to have inter-city ground level public transportation - compare American trains (low quality) with European trains (very nice and popular). Both American continents still have a lot of land that's completely unutilized, not ev…

The East coast of the US has a similar population density to Europe, but much worse train service.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#104

Post by huffmsa »

Brakenshire wrote: post #16
adrianN wrote: post #10

How difficult is it to build transmission lines in the US? In Germany we have enormous problems building a transmission line from the offshore windparks in the north to the industrial centers in the south. NIMBYs are opposing it fiercly.

Funnily enough, Rick “dismantle the DOE” Perry championed the building of interconnectors to allow the development of wind in Western Texas, he even paid for it as a public infrastructure project!

The Federal Government and it's capacity to meddle should be minimized whenever possible.

State and local governments are better suited for addressing the issues of their constituents.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#105

Post by huffmsa »

johnohara wrote: post #20

Not difficult to imagine. I drove from Illinois to Arizona just last week. In west Texas, steady winds were turning hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of energy converters. Below those turbines were enormous fields of corn rivaling anything seen in southern Illinois. Ethanol? When the wind farms ended the feed lots began. Thousands and thousands of head of cattle being fed from hay piles five hundred feet long and tw…

A big driver of this is the relatively non-existent zoning laws in most of Texas. It's broadly the case (and accepted and defended by people with lots of guns) that you should be free to do just about anything you want on land you own.

Want to build windmills, run cattle, and operate a strip club in your backyard? Go for it.

So you get all these ranchers who realized "shoot, cows only need space up to about 6 feet. I've got all that air not doing anything, might as well put up some windmills."

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#106

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

briandear wrote: post #99
WhompingWindows wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How should climate change or air pollution or any of it be partisan? When Republican voters are polled, many say they love the environment and the outdoors too. The truth is fossil fuel has bought and sold most R politicians and many D politicians too. Until we get money out of politics or make the energy companies go bankrupt, they will continue to pay politicians to prevent the cleaning of our environment and energ…

We Republicans do care about pollution. But the reclassification of CO2 as a pollutant defines logic. If CO2 is a pollutant, then so is Oxygen. We also disagree about the redistributive underbelly of “climate” policy.

The only difference between a therapeutic drug and poison is the dose. Oxygen can be a pollutant at high concentration... But I don't see any industry releasing tons of it in the atmosphere every day.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#107

Post by roenxi »

Spare_account wrote: post #91
grumpydba wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the ugliness. I've seen great landscapes being heavily damaged by wind turbines.

Which is a subjective notion, of course. I look at a landscape full of wind turbines and I see the beauty of a species recognising it needed to change.

Arguably, but then arguably a landscape covered in mines and coal fired power stations is also beautiful; mountains being moved in aid of making people's lives better, the foundations of centuries of human progress, etc, etc. A 10km by 10km concrete grid could be a beautiful monument to a species that has recognised it needed to master concrete (fantastic stuff concrete, a miracle substance really).

Windmills are a bit of an eyesore compared to a great natural scene.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#108

Post by heyflyguy »

I spend alot of time flying in west Texas for our startup, and I can tell you that looking at every square mile west of Abilene is alot like the game Civilization. Few actually inhabit the land outside of metro city centers, and every square inch outside of it is producing something. Oil wells, oil pipelines, water pipelines, wind, sand, solar, salt - it has to be some of the most economically active land in the US - and barely has any cellular coverage.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#109

Post by espeed »

mirimir wrote: post #30

> Texas produces and consumes more electricity overall than any other state. OK, why? From an article in Texas Monthly:[0] > More than half of the energy consumed in Texas is for industrial use, according to the EIA, while residential use—which in terms of sheer BTUs is the most in the nation, even as our per capita usage is relatively low—accounts for just over 13 percent. Transportation accounts for nearly a quarte…

Texas has its own grid too. In the summer it's hot, and air conditioning consumes a lot...

"Power demand is highest in summer, primarily due to air conditioning use in homes and businesses. The region's all-time record peak hour occurred on July 19, 2018, when consumer demand hit 73,259 MW. A megawatt of electricity can power about 200 Texas homes during periods of peak demand."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection

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