Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by ajross » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:47 AM UTC

JudgeWapner wrote: post #43

kadoban wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate the sanity of the current political climate on the right in the US. There is absolutely not going to be anything close to everyone getting behind cutting back on coal or any pollutant, regardless of how you sell it. There's morons out there specifically making their trucks spew black sludge into the air and bragging about it. The current president won with a large part of his message being br…

Democrats are just as irrational. By giving tax breaks to renewable energy, letting Priuses use the diamond lane, the whole solyndra scandal. They talk a good game, but strangely their utopian plans never quite work out, but their big government and tax hikes always stay. Both parties are the same.

> Democrats are just as irrational. By giving tax breaks to renewable energy, letting Priuses use the diamond lane, the whole solyndra scandal.

Sorry, how exactly do you balance that? On one side, you have government encouragement of renewable energy, low emmission vehicles, and solar power (though on that one they got scammed). I can see arguments that the first two are bad policy, and the third is a straight up mistake (and fraud on the part of a few individuals). None seem "irrational".

On the other, you have a whole political party that has simply "decided" to reject long-settled consensus science on the basis of what they "want" to be true philosophically.

Really?

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

#72

Post by adventured » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

cma wrote: post #33

chiefalchemist wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. Right. Oops. I did mean to say oil/natural gas.

Natural gas is cheaply transportable for heating which is probably a more efficient use of it than in electricity production (I think for electricity it is mainly used in peaker plants that need to start up quickly)

Natural gas is 35.1% of the US energy mix now. That's not peaker plants. It's extremely effective for normal utility scale electricity production.

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

#73

Post by ajross » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

JudgeWapner wrote: post #63

komali2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that tax breaks to renewable energy or letting greener vehicles use the diamond lane is irrational? I'll note two things, by the way 1. O&G companies also get tax subsidies. 2. The Republican led government of Texas approved giving electric cars the right to use the HOV lane with one person in the car, so you must thus acknowledge that they are at least as irrational

I can get a tax rebate for purchasing an Oil-powered vehicle, or are you deliberately misreading what I posted? Tax rebates for "going green" is irrational because it defies its own purpose! If EV's are great, they're great because they emit less NOx, and that should be the impetus to switch. If Democrats are the Superior party, and they know best, they won't need financial incentives (read: bribery) to promote the S…

> Tax rebates for "going green" is irrational because it defies its own purpose! If EV's are great, they're great because they emit less NOx, and that should be the impetus to switch.

"Impetus" is an issue of opinion, not rationality. Some people are incentivized by different things. But if the government as a whole wants less gas used, it can use money as a carrot.

I mean, if you want to call that "irrational" then basically all government spending or credits are irrational. Sales tax is irrational. Farm subsidies are irrational. The mortgage interest rate deduction is irrational. Military spending is irrational. Parks are irrational. Sports stadiums are irrational. Public universities are irrational. The term loses its meaning.

Everything is "pay for play" (as you put it) in a real economy. We, as represented by our elected government, pool our resources to get things that we can't get by individual action. This is like government 101, dude.

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

#74

Post by reitzensteinm » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 6:02 AM UTC

ebrewste wrote: post #67

hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are hybrids greener? They emit less NOx so I am in favour but is their total lifetime carbon lower than a pure ICE?

H ybrids "sort of" appear to be ahead in lower lifetime CO2. They key thing is that they higher GHG emmisions from the eletric grid, regionally, the less good hybrids look. But considering the trend of how fast wind, solar are lowering in cost, where coal isn't, I think the picture is getting better re: GHG emmisions for hybrids and electric, where gas IC engines are not, at least not as fast. https://science.howstuf…

If you place more load on a grid that's purposefully transitioning away from fossil fuels, the entirety of the extra load should properly be accounted under the carbon emissions of the dirty plants you're shutting down, because that will be delayed.

In other words, the marginal emissions caused by the extra load is the actual consequence, not the emissions proportional to that load.

But PHEVs in my opinion have an overlooked utility for demand dispatch and battery to grid transfers, even when compared to BEVs.

The entirety of a PHEVs battery can be used for either task.

A long range BEV that you use to commute may be put in a mode where the power company is free to decide when to charge the battery once it's above a user set minimum. This allows off demand to be shifted to follow renewable production.

But for a PHEV, that minimum is zero. While the battery isn't as big as a BEV, the portion set aside for this purpose may be as large. During a heat wave, they don't have to pull anything from the grid, and can in fact contribute. Dirty power, but much less impactful than building power stations for a few days a year.

The net result is a vehicle that acts as a BEV for commuting, is able to travel long distances without a supercharger, and allows the grid to tolerate higher renewable mixes.

I think it makes a ton of sense today. But the market is shifting so quickly, it may only for a short window.

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

#75

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

Fej wrote: post #37

The majority of the US electorate is underinformed and/or misinformed. The most popular cable news network is Fox News, which pushes straight-up falsehoods as propaganda for the right. That's not to say the left-wing networks are innocent, just that the most popular one is also the most dishonest. It has a wide reach and many voters get all of their news from only this network. The right-wing party is completely boug…

Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. All such discussions just circulate the same generic material, and it's exceedingly tedious.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20539876 and marked it off-topic.

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

#76

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 6:06 AM UTC

elamje wrote: post #58

6thaccount2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're hooking up your rural house to a turbine, your comment is misleading. The power going to your house will still be a mix of coal, natural gas, wind, solar, and others.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Can someone show that a company that does not install wind turbines at your house can guarantee that you will be receiving power only produced by wind turbines? I could be misunderstanding something, but it seems that two neighbors(one using “wind”, the other using standard power) that share the same power line simply cannot be getting power from different sources. Edit: Hmm, n…

It breaks the site guidelines to go on about downvoting and that often triggers further downvotes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#77

Post by mirimir » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 6:14 AM UTC

elamje wrote: post #56

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 resident here. If you have ever driven by a refinery of any type you will see where energy goes. The shear amount of energy to convert oil to usable gas/plastics/etc. is pretty crazy. Texas has the biggest oil refinery presence in the US ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_refining_in_the_Un... ) Refineries don’t just make gasoline, but plastic, engine oil, industrial lubricant. That being said, wiki wi…

Thanks. That was my guess. I mean, I didn't think that aluminum production was big there.

I wonder what the energy efficiency of petroleum refining is. From the US DOE,[0] I get:

   TBtu
   3542  primary energy
   2082  applied energy
   1460  energy lost

So ~59%. That's a lot of energy to blow off.

0) https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/dynamic-manufacturing-energy...

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

#78

Post by D_Alex » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 6:17 AM UTC

ebrewste wrote: post #67

hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are hybrids greener? They emit less NOx so I am in favour but is their total lifetime carbon lower than a pure ICE?

H ybrids "sort of" appear to be ahead in lower lifetime CO2. They key thing is that they higher GHG emmisions from the eletric grid, regionally, the less good hybrids look. But considering the trend of how fast wind, solar are lowering in cost, where coal isn't, I think the picture is getting better re: GHG emmisions for hybrids and electric, where gas IC engines are not, at least not as fast. https://science.howstuf…

>Hybrids "sort of" appear to be ahead in lower lifetime CO2...

I think that this is unnecessarily cautious, to the point of being misleading.

The right answer is "Hybrids ARE lower than ICEs when it comes to GHG emissions" - this is true in general and of all hybrids collectively. It may not be true in some rare individual cases, where the hybrid is not particularly efficient and the electricity is generated from coal (see figure ES1 in the Argonne paper you linked above).

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

#79

Post by dagss » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 6:23 AM UTC

6thaccount2 wrote: post #49

benmccann wrote: post #46

If you live in Texas you can switch your home's power to wind via a YC company and probably save money: getgex.com

Unless you're hooking up your rural house to a turbine, your comment is misleading. The power going to your house will still be a mix of coal, natural gas, wind, solar, and others.

I am sure you also like to point out that when people are using cash, they are "really" exhanging rectangular pieces of cotton/paper/plastic.

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

#80

Post by komali2 » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 6:45 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #65

komali2 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree as a product of the southern education system. Worth noting that some schools can't even afford to stay open five days a week. Gems from my public schooling in South Carolina: 1. A teacher telling me to put my Harry Potter book away as it was written by Satan. Not that it was satanic or written by a Satanist. No, written literally by the hand of Lucifer himself. 2. The moon landing might not have happened.…

I had a very similar experience in middle school and high school in rural Florida, almost point-by-point. Yet I thought I had rather decent education. So what if my 11th grade American History teacher gave a week-long seminar on the Civil War as "states rights", and explained to the class (nearly 1/3 of which was black) the lexicon of racial classifications--"now a _blue_ black was somebody who was really dark and be…

> Even the most bigoted American won't take at face value a narrative that group A is intellectually, genetically, or morally inferior from group B. Every coal rolling white nationalist (not that these things always come together) have shockingly modern and sophisticated ideas about race and culture, even if cringe worthy.

I acknowledge your experience, but I'm not sure how to take this. Can you help me understand what kind of modern ideals about race and culture an avowed racist would have?