Wind gets even better going northward from the Texas panhandle up to Canada. But there's no big load anywhere near there.
Texas sets single-day wind power record
41–50 of 60 posts
Re: Texas sets single-day wind power record
#42You can actually see it. Driving country (state) highways, from ,say, just west of Ft Worth, up to the border, hundreds of turbines. There's also a factory in between Ft Worth and Denton where, I believe, some pieces of the turbines are built and (I know) the larger section of the turbines are assembled. It makes sense as well, especially to the west, where wind is a near constant and there is nothing . Scrub from th…
That is one of the reasons why Facebook Data Center is in Ft.Worth, easier access to Wind power.
Wind power.. and tens of millions in tax credits.. It's crazy how much money localities are dishing out to get a few dozen jobs. I get the competitive aspect (if we don't, someone else will) but forum shopping is gross in just about every manifestation.
Re: Texas sets single-day wind power record
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm actually both shocked and surprised how quickly Texas is transitioning to renewables with their, ahem, political climate, but happy nonetheless! Warren Buffet should be ashamed of Berkshire Hathaway's role in strongarming the PUC in Nevada in NV Energy's favor.
Texas is a great example of what happens in an almost uncontrolled free market. With renewables becoming far cheaper, it makes sense that markets that work off basic free market economics will adopt them. Texas is pragmatic that way and often provides a very simple model for what it takes to get things adopted without strong regulations forcing the matter. It's a weird state only insomuch that it isn't like everywher…
I'm not sure I'd describe it as an "almost uncontrolled free market", probably something closer to a "state-organized market". There are definitely market mechanisms at work in the Texas energy sector, but also quite a bit of central planning, especially on infrastructure, and especially with wind power. The state has been heavily involved in building out transmission lines to make wind turbine construction in remote areas more attractive, because building a wind turbine nowhere near major transmission lines is obviously not economical, and there are big coordination and right-of-way problems getting all the people who hold land and might want to build turbines to figure out, purely in the private sector, how to get together to finance and build transmission lines.
The specific solution Texas has used is to create something called "Competitive Renewable Energy Zones" (CREZs), where the state identifies promising areas and invests heavily in infrastructure to try to jumpstart production, with a plan of recovering the infrastructure spending from tax on that production (once it materializes). About $7 billion in tax money has been spent on that project so far, so the central-planning part of the story isn't exactly small change. Not sure where to link for a good overview, but this article has some information: http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/14/7-billion-crez-projec...
Re: Texas sets single-day wind power record
#44It's all those refried beans and smoked meats...
Re: Texas sets single-day wind power record
#45In Denmark, it was 42% for all of 2015; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark
That's 42% of electricity only, though. In 2013 (the last year for which the table in Wikipedia has data) they consumed ~30 TWh of electricity --- but 200 TWh of fossil fuels. This'll be heating and transport. Heating and transport always dominates energy consumption. Yes, generating that much electricity via renewables is a very good thing. But electricity is just a small slice of a much larger pie.
How much of a dent it will make remains to be seen, but Denmark does have an active plan to shift away from fossil fuels for heating. Installation of new oil and natural-gas furnaces was recently banned, partly as part of the push away from fossil fuels, and partly because of fears of Russian dominance over gas supplies. In urban areas the goal is to get everyone on the district-heating grid, which is fueled mostly by a mix of trash incinerators and cogeneration with electric power plants. There's a medium-term plan to opportunistically produce more of the heat from excess wind power, with hopes that doing so will produce a "win-win" for electric-grid management by giving grid managers an easy place to dump energy to smooth out short-term variations in electric production.
Transport is another story. Lots of fossil fuels there, and probably not going away soon.
Re: Texas sets single-day wind power record
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm actually both shocked and surprised how quickly Texas is transitioning to renewables with their, ahem, political climate, but happy nonetheless! Warren Buffet should be ashamed of Berkshire Hathaway's role in strongarming the PUC in Nevada in NV Energy's favor.
Texas is a great example of what happens in an almost uncontrolled free market. With renewables becoming far cheaper, it makes sense that markets that work off basic free market economics will adopt them. Texas is pragmatic that way and often provides a very simple model for what it takes to get things adopted without strong regulations forcing the matter. It's a weird state only insomuch that it isn't like everywher…
Before we get too voluntary here, let's remember that wind power was developed through heavy subsidies from many governments over the years.
Re: Texas sets single-day wind power record
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the first paragraph of the article: "When the Education Department releases its biennial scorecard of reading and math scores for all 50 states this week, Florida and Texas are likely to look pretty mediocre. In 2013, the last time that scores were released, Florida ranked 30th on the tests, which are given to fourth and eighth graders, and Texas ranked 32nd." And: > Plenty of Californians are moving here, many…
These refugees from bankrupted states are locusts that destroy the prosperity in one state, then move on to other prosperous states.
California pays America's bills.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-st...
Re: Texas sets single-day wind power record
#48Not strictly related to wind power in Texas, but reminded me how at the same time in Finland a few authorities recommended consumers to actually limit their use of eletricity "for the common good". The main cause was increase in wind power capacity in the last few years (as there was practically no wind that day), coupled with very low temperatures and problems with buying electricity from Russia. It's kinda scary ho…
Doesn't seem much worse than where I am now.
California has been recommending people to limit use of water for more than a year, and water is arguably a more basic necessity than electricity.
Re: Texas sets single-day wind power record
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're wrong http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/upshot/surprise-florida... Don't worry about the political climate too much though. Plenty of Californians are moving here, many intent on advocating for the same policies here that caused them to flee their state in the first place.
From the first paragraph of the article: "When the Education Department releases its biennial scorecard of reading and math scores for all 50 states this week, Florida and Texas are likely to look pretty mediocre. In 2013, the last time that scores were released, Florida ranked 30th on the tests, which are given to fourth and eighth graders, and Texas ranked 32nd." And: > Plenty of Californians are moving here, many…
Read the entire article.
The upshot is that TX and FL perform very well when demographics are adjusted for; which is to say, it's a much easier job to teach reading to eighth-generation Americans in Iowa or Connecticut than to kids who arrived in the US last week.
Re: Texas sets single-day wind power record
#50For those who do not know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection Texas is the only state that has it's own power grid, owned by the state. The stuff they are working on right now, including massive distributed battery systems, solar, more wind, etc. will be the one of the most advanced renewable systems in the world given the amount of power and consumption. It's awesome to see how as 'relatively' small…
This has nothing to do with Texas being forward thinking, but more with the huge subsidies dealing with wind power in the US. Private companies are building turbines and farms all over as Washington is fronting much of the bill for awhile. This is all about profit. It just so happens we get something good out of it, and yes ERCOT has some great engineers.
So nobody in the bay area that drives a Nissan leaf is forward thinking then either because they are heavily subsidized. Am I correct in understanding your reasoning?
Just because something has a subsidy doesn't mean the supporters are automatically profit hungry morons.