14 ms·

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

270 points by rchaudhary 7y ago

mirimir 7y ago
> 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 quarter, while commercial comes in slightly lower than residential. I wonder what the major industrial uses are. Some is used in oil and natural gas production, I guess. And perhaps size accounts for high transportation usage. 0) https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/texas-uses-energy-state/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/texas-uses-energy-state/
- elamje 7y ago
  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_United_States 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 will tell you 85% of refinery output goes to gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, and aviation fuel.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    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-sankey-tool-2010-units-trillion-btu https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/dynamic-manufacturing-energy...
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      This illustrates something that is curiously lacking from most ICE vs BEV energy efficiency calculations, namely: More electricity is spent just refining the gasoline used by an ICE than is used in total by a BEV to go the same distance.
      - mirimir 7y ago
        Sure. But it can be generated on refinery sites, using solids and extremely nonvolatile fractions as fuel. I suspect that using outside electricity is a purely economic issue. That is, when the value of additional products produced is greater than the cost of extra electricity needed. So in that sense, oil refineries are like aluminum refineries, in that they can store surplus electricity.
      - mirimir 7y ago
        Damn, I wasn't thinking this through clearly. And it's damn complicated. The relevant comparison is arguably greenhouse gas emissions per km. For ICE, you clearly must include emissions during refining. But that could be ~zero, if all the process energy were wind, solar or nuclear electricity. Or it could be an additional 70%, if all the process energy were petroleum. So the range is 1.0-1.7 times nominal fuel emissions. For BEV, total emissions could be ~zero, if all the electricity were wind, solar or nuclear. But if the electricity were generated from fossil fuels, you'd have nominal fuel emissions plus both refining process energy and generation loss. Electricity from natural gas could be the clear winner, because you get additional energy from two H2 for C converted to CO2. Unless leakage were too great. And there's ~no conversion loss in the vehicle. So that's maybe 0.4-0.7 relative to gasoline/diesel fuel emissions. Electricity from coal and petroleum would clearly be worse. For coal, because there's ~no H2, and because generation efficiency is lower than for natural gas. And for petroleum, because you have the 0%-70% process energy, less H2 per C, and somewhat lower generation efficiency. But there's ~no conversion loss in the vehicle for either. So overall that's maybe 0.8-1.4 relative to gasoline/diesel fuel emissions. Bottom line, relative to nominal ICE fuel emissions: ICE ~1 to ~1.7 BEV ~0 to ~1.4 But hey, those are totally thumbnail estimates.
  - dinofacedude 7y ago
    This exactly. I lived in Lumberton near Beaumont for a few years and the paper mill made most of the town stink at the time. I moved to Mount Pleasant for another few years and the entire town's industry centers around the pilgrim's pride chicken factory. The entire town, coincidentally, smells like raw chicken.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      I recall a tour of a kraft (softwood paper) mill. There was a water spray unit (like you'd see in a car wash) at the parking lot exit. To keep SOx deposits from dissolving employees' vehicles.
- espeed 7y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  Probably also has to do with Texas just being the geographically largest of the lower 48. (Alaska is much bigger but its population is very low so they don't use much power.) Texas also has its own grid [0]. There are three separate grids in the lower 48: East, West, and Texas. This means the Texas grid doesn't need to stay in phase with the rest of the US. While they do move power to/from the other two grids, it's done with DC interties. Texas shares power with Mexico via high-voltage DC transmission lines [1]. [0] https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-texas-have-its-own-power-grid/ https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-... [1] http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/8192dccad527af33c125737f002b2176.aspx http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/8192dccad527af33c125737f002...
  - mirimir 7y ago
    > Texas shares power with Mexico via high-voltage DC transmission lines [1]. It also sells to adjoining states. The Texan site that I referenced mentions that.
Whatarethese 7y ago
Makes sense Texas is one flat windy state.
- mc32 7y ago
  Importantly, according to this map [1], it’s one of the better places for high average wind speed over a year at 30m and 100m height. From the Dakotas/Montana down through Texas is the sweet spot for turbines. [1]https://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html https://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html
  - Brakenshire 7y ago
    Look at the ribbon of purple offshore!
- SilasX 7y ago
  Yes, investor T. Boone Pickens nicknamed America the "Saudi Arabia of wind" due to the windy plains. http://pickensplan.com/the-plan/wind/ http://pickensplan.com/the-plan/wind/
- komali2 7y ago
  Yes, it is, and the winfarms are an absolute gorgeous addition to our horizon. It can get a bit grim driving around Texas. It can take up to three days to get out of the state depending on which direction you're going... and to get from the oceans to any mountains in any direction takes about as long as well (start heading towards New Mexico best bet IMO). There are some "hills" over by Austin and Enchanted Rock I guess. Point is, these windmills are a great way to break the monotony of a long Texas roadtrip. I did one with my little cousins once and their favorite part was seeing the windmills.
jacobush 7y ago
Well, that element of Real Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Steel is on track to be reality. (Set in the year 2020, the movie features lots and lots of windmills in Texas.) :-)
plazmatic 7y ago
Thank god Obama set us on the right track. The current administration is doing everything to hamper this great progress in terms of converting to renewable energies. Lets get some real leadership back in the White House in 2020!
dtornabene 7y ago
If you're interested in this, you should probably check out some of the reporting over the political battles this very year over wind subsidies and the intraparty disputes among republicans in the state lege.
thebeefytaco 7y ago
Primary Source: http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172485/DemandandEnergy2019.xlsx http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172485/DemandandEnerg... (Excel file) You can find the data they're referencing in the "Energy by Fuel Type" tab.
- 6thaccount2 7y ago
  I don't think this will get you all of the wind power in Texas as the panhandle of Texas has at least one major utility participating in the SPP market as well which is next door.
adrianN 7y ago
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.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Same problem in the states, although it’s improving with buried HVDC (much smaller right of way required, no need to lay concrete conduit, etc).
- tracker1 7y ago
  Similar in the US.. but will vary greatly depending on where you're going to/from. Of course, the NIMBYs are really against expansion of nuclear power, which by all means should be much more common than coal at this point. Especially in relatively stable locations like inland Texas, for example (and most of the non-coastal southwest us). A little NIMBY/FUD goes a long way.
  - favorited 7y ago
    Oh I've seen NIMBYs lose their minds over wind turbines too...
    - zamalek 7y ago
      Yep, it's "the noise."
      - grumpydba 7y ago
        Probably the ugliness. I've seen great landscapes being heavily damaged by wind turbines.
        Spare_account 7y ago
        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.
tracker1 7y ago
One thing I'm amused (not in a good way) by, is that there's so much FUD and marketing around the use of Coal etc. for energy and alternatives (Nuclear, wind, solar) ... I'm not necessarily knowledge enough to favor some over others. But I always felt, "because pollution," should be enough reason alone to look at alternatives, and considering the impact of building/supplying/disposing of the materials in the alternatives as well. I tend not to travel to/through some locations in the US simply because of the pollution. I remember the taste, smell and my eyes burning when I drove through eastern tx, la, etc to florida a few years ago... I don't get how people can just put up with it. Last two times I've been in LA, the air was just nasty. I mean it really shouldn't even be a D vs R or LP issue... it should be an issue of sanity. And nobody seems to be willing to budge from a fringe position in any case.
- tootie 7y ago
  It's kind of nuts that there's a lobby in favor of more car exhaust. Car manufacturers had to negotiate directly with California after Trump rolled back Obama's CAFE standard. Corporate interests are now to the left of America's federal government.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    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 squeeze out a few more millions.
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      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.
johnohara 7y ago
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 two stories tall. Beyond that, a thousand head of black angus free grazing next to man-made water resevoirs a thousand foot wide. One thing you learn about Texans -- they know how to scale.
- danielecook 7y ago
  And the smell. Describe the smell for us.
  - johnohara 7y ago
    Doesn't compare to the feedlots in El Paso which are easily 5x the size (or more), somewhat higher up from the river. The west Texas wind was blowing from the south/southwest at 15-20 mph. There was no detectable odor, even west of Amarillo when we stopped for fuel. Hot too. 103 degrees fahrenheit. Plenty of room to dissipate I guess. I was surprised however, by the amount of corn being grown. I don't remember seeing it just a few years ago. I could be wrong. It seemed out of place but was very healthy. 5-6 feet tall already.
    - dreamcompiler 7y ago
      > There was no detectable odor, even west of Amarillo when we stopped for fuel. I've driven by the Wildorado feedlot dozens of times, and I always put my A/C on recirc 5 miles before and after. The stench still gets into the car. Conditions must have been very unusual during your trip.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    "Indescribable". I could smell Dodge City, KS, 20 miles downwind. OTOH, very cool brick streets, and best taquerias I've found anywhere in the States, with a very wide selection of meats.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
What's shocking to me is that so much of Texas' energy production is __not__ from oil. I read the headline and expected to find coal at say 4% and wind at say 5%. That is, coal is so small it wouldn't take much to out so it. But both over 20%? That's a surprise.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Oil is more profitable for other stuff like vehicles and plastics, it'd be a financial waste to burn it for electricity.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    Oh. Right. Oops. I did mean to say oil/natural gas.
    - cma 7y ago
      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)
      - adventured 7y ago
        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.
        cma 7y ago
        Ah ok, looks like it has grown a lot the last 10 years.
Cactus2018 7y ago
The United States Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB) provides the locations of land-based and offshore wind turbines in the United States, corresponding wind project information, and turbine technical specifications. https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/ https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/
Fej 7y ago
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 bought out by the fossil fuel lobby, which has peddled the "global-warming-is-a-myth" narrative since the early 80's. Both the party and this lobby push that narrative through the right-wing media, which uninformed voters eat up, as the left-wing party has been completely demonized to them via that same media. Those who trust these right-wing media outlets often do so on principle since these outlets are not "leftist" and the "left-wing media" is "out to get them". As a result, they often do not trust other media sources. There is also the poisoning of the well that is filter bubbles on social media platforms (particularly Facebook) but I won't get into that as this comment is quite long already. Hopefully this explains our problems to an extent. (I love explaining/ranting to non-Americans as they can empathize with my incredulity.)
- caseysoftware 7y ago
  > The majority of the US electorate is underinformed and/or misinformed. It starts long before that. Most of the US is poorly educated and lacks critical thinking capability. That is the fault of a broken education system focused on the lowest common denominator instead of helping the top or even just supporting the middle.
  - fkdo 7y ago
    I think most Americans receive a quality education that covers a lot of really valuable material. The US population isn't the most well educated, but it's unfair to our teachers to say that most Americans are poorly educated.
    - komali2 7y ago
      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 got sent to the principal's office for refusing to back down over this. 3. Dinosaurs might not have been real. 4. Evolution probably isn't real. 5. Having sex before marriage will give me herpes. 6. The civil war was a war for state's rights.
ajflores1604 7y ago
In 2015, the spot price of electricity actually dipped negative for a little bit, thanks to wind. This article gets into the context of that specific circumstance. https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes-negative-wind-power-was-so-plentiful-one-night-that-producers-paid-the-state-to-take-it.html https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes-ne...
benmccann 7y ago
If you live in Texas you can switch your home's power to wind via a YC company and probably save money: getgex.com
- 6thaccount2 7y ago
  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.
  - elamje 7y ago
    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, now I’m getting downvoted, still without an explaination.
    - dang 7y ago
      It breaks the site guidelines to go on about downvoting and that often triggers further downvotes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - elamje 7y ago
        Okay, sorry dang.
    - benj111 7y ago
      If you buy green electricity such as wind power you are paying for that power to be generated. If 10% of people buy wind power, 10% of the grid should be wind. If 100% of the people buy wind power, 100% of the grid should be wind. The parent is pointing out that absent the grid being 100% wind, the electricity delivered to your house isnt necessarily from wind power. This isn't particularly helpful, or even required. An electron is an electron, where it goes doesn't really matter, just where it came from.
davidw 7y ago
Disappointed it wasn't reported as a blow to the coal industry.
SimpleMind01 7y ago
Yeah, keep on bringing them up as long as there are people who do not mind going broke paying up https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/21/texas-taxpayers-pay-the-french-government-for-wind-power-and-then-pay-the-grid-to-take-it/#1a4a766146e9 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/21/texas-ta... https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FySh5HYMVpbnNKR0drRTc3OGktWnk1cVhUQTZBMzE0cV9r/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FySh5HYMVpbnNKR0drRTc3OGk...
heyflyguy 7y ago
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.
effnorwood 7y ago
It isn’t.
dinofacedude 7y ago
As a Texan, this makes me proud

270 points by rchaudhary 7y ago

> 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 quarter, while commercial comes in slightly lower than residential. I wonder what the major industrial uses are. Some is used in oil and natural gas production, I guess. And perhaps size accounts for high transportation usage. 0) https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/texas-uses-energy-state/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/texas-uses-energy-state/

elamje 7y ago
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_United_States 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 will tell you 85% of refinery output goes to gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, and aviation fuel.
- mirimir 7y ago
  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-sankey-tool-2010-units-trillion-btu https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/dynamic-manufacturing-energy...
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    This illustrates something that is curiously lacking from most ICE vs BEV energy efficiency calculations, namely: More electricity is spent just refining the gasoline used by an ICE than is used in total by a BEV to go the same distance.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Sure. But it can be generated on refinery sites, using solids and extremely nonvolatile fractions as fuel. I suspect that using outside electricity is a purely economic issue. That is, when the value of additional products produced is greater than the cost of extra electricity needed. So in that sense, oil refineries are like aluminum refineries, in that they can store surplus electricity.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Damn, I wasn't thinking this through clearly. And it's damn complicated. The relevant comparison is arguably greenhouse gas emissions per km. For ICE, you clearly must include emissions during refining. But that could be ~zero, if all the process energy were wind, solar or nuclear electricity. Or it could be an additional 70%, if all the process energy were petroleum. So the range is 1.0-1.7 times nominal fuel emissions. For BEV, total emissions could be ~zero, if all the electricity were wind, solar or nuclear. But if the electricity were generated from fossil fuels, you'd have nominal fuel emissions plus both refining process energy and generation loss. Electricity from natural gas could be the clear winner, because you get additional energy from two H2 for C converted to CO2. Unless leakage were too great. And there's ~no conversion loss in the vehicle. So that's maybe 0.4-0.7 relative to gasoline/diesel fuel emissions. Electricity from coal and petroleum would clearly be worse. For coal, because there's ~no H2, and because generation efficiency is lower than for natural gas. And for petroleum, because you have the 0%-70% process energy, less H2 per C, and somewhat lower generation efficiency. But there's ~no conversion loss in the vehicle for either. So overall that's maybe 0.8-1.4 relative to gasoline/diesel fuel emissions. Bottom line, relative to nominal ICE fuel emissions: ICE ~1 to ~1.7 BEV ~0 to ~1.4 But hey, those are totally thumbnail estimates.
- dinofacedude 7y ago
  This exactly. I lived in Lumberton near Beaumont for a few years and the paper mill made most of the town stink at the time. I moved to Mount Pleasant for another few years and the entire town's industry centers around the pilgrim's pride chicken factory. The entire town, coincidentally, smells like raw chicken.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    I recall a tour of a kraft (softwood paper) mill. There was a water spray unit (like you'd see in a car wash) at the parking lot exit. To keep SOx deposits from dissolving employees' vehicles.
espeed 7y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Probably also has to do with Texas just being the geographically largest of the lower 48. (Alaska is much bigger but its population is very low so they don't use much power.) Texas also has its own grid [0]. There are three separate grids in the lower 48: East, West, and Texas. This means the Texas grid doesn't need to stay in phase with the rest of the US. While they do move power to/from the other two grids, it's done with DC interties. Texas shares power with Mexico via high-voltage DC transmission lines [1]. [0] https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-texas-have-its-own-power-grid/ https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-... [1] http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/8192dccad527af33c125737f002b2176.aspx http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/8192dccad527af33c125737f002...
- mirimir 7y ago
  > Texas shares power with Mexico via high-voltage DC transmission lines [1]. It also sells to adjoining states. The Texan site that I referenced mentions that.

Whatarethese 7y ago

Makes sense Texas is one flat windy state.

mc32 7y ago
Importantly, according to this map [1], it’s one of the better places for high average wind speed over a year at 30m and 100m height. From the Dakotas/Montana down through Texas is the sweet spot for turbines. [1]https://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html https://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html
- Brakenshire 7y ago
  Look at the ribbon of purple offshore!
SilasX 7y ago
Yes, investor T. Boone Pickens nicknamed America the "Saudi Arabia of wind" due to the windy plains. http://pickensplan.com/the-plan/wind/ http://pickensplan.com/the-plan/wind/
komali2 7y ago
Yes, it is, and the winfarms are an absolute gorgeous addition to our horizon. It can get a bit grim driving around Texas. It can take up to three days to get out of the state depending on which direction you're going... and to get from the oceans to any mountains in any direction takes about as long as well (start heading towards New Mexico best bet IMO). There are some "hills" over by Austin and Enchanted Rock I guess. Point is, these windmills are a great way to break the monotony of a long Texas roadtrip. I did one with my little cousins once and their favorite part was seeing the windmills.

jacobush 7y ago

Well, that element of Real Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Steel is on track to be reality. (Set in the year 2020, the movie features lots and lots of windmills in Texas.) :-)

plazmatic 7y ago

Thank god Obama set us on the right track. The current administration is doing everything to hamper this great progress in terms of converting to renewable energies. Lets get some real leadership back in the White House in 2020!

dtornabene 7y ago

If you're interested in this, you should probably check out some of the reporting over the political battles this very year over wind subsidies and the intraparty disputes among republicans in the state lege.

thebeefytaco 7y ago

Primary Source: http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172485/DemandandEnergy2019.xlsx http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172485/DemandandEnerg... (Excel file) You can find the data they're referencing in the "Energy by Fuel Type" tab.

6thaccount2 7y ago
I don't think this will get you all of the wind power in Texas as the panhandle of Texas has at least one major utility participating in the SPP market as well which is next door.

adrianN 7y ago

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.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Same problem in the states, although it’s improving with buried HVDC (much smaller right of way required, no need to lay concrete conduit, etc).
tracker1 7y ago
Similar in the US.. but will vary greatly depending on where you're going to/from. Of course, the NIMBYs are really against expansion of nuclear power, which by all means should be much more common than coal at this point. Especially in relatively stable locations like inland Texas, for example (and most of the non-coastal southwest us). A little NIMBY/FUD goes a long way.
- favorited 7y ago
  Oh I've seen NIMBYs lose their minds over wind turbines too...
  - zamalek 7y ago
    Yep, it's "the noise."
    - grumpydba 7y ago
      Probably the ugliness. I've seen great landscapes being heavily damaged by wind turbines.
      - Spare_account 7y ago
        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.

tracker1 7y ago

One thing I'm amused (not in a good way) by, is that there's so much FUD and marketing around the use of Coal etc. for energy and alternatives (Nuclear, wind, solar) ... I'm not necessarily knowledge enough to favor some over others. But I always felt, "because pollution," should be enough reason alone to look at alternatives, and considering the impact of building/supplying/disposing of the materials in the alternatives as well. I tend not to travel to/through some locations in the US simply because of the pollution. I remember the taste, smell and my eyes burning when I drove through eastern tx, la, etc to florida a few years ago... I don't get how people can just put up with it. Last two times I've been in LA, the air was just nasty. I mean it really shouldn't even be a D vs R or LP issue... it should be an issue of sanity. And nobody seems to be willing to budge from a fringe position in any case.

tootie 7y ago
It's kind of nuts that there's a lobby in favor of more car exhaust. Car manufacturers had to negotiate directly with California after Trump rolled back Obama's CAFE standard. Corporate interests are now to the left of America's federal government.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  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 squeeze out a few more millions.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    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.

johnohara 7y ago

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 two stories tall. Beyond that, a thousand head of black angus free grazing next to man-made water resevoirs a thousand foot wide. One thing you learn about Texans -- they know how to scale.

danielecook 7y ago
And the smell. Describe the smell for us.
- johnohara 7y ago
  Doesn't compare to the feedlots in El Paso which are easily 5x the size (or more), somewhat higher up from the river. The west Texas wind was blowing from the south/southwest at 15-20 mph. There was no detectable odor, even west of Amarillo when we stopped for fuel. Hot too. 103 degrees fahrenheit. Plenty of room to dissipate I guess. I was surprised however, by the amount of corn being grown. I don't remember seeing it just a few years ago. I could be wrong. It seemed out of place but was very healthy. 5-6 feet tall already.
  - dreamcompiler 7y ago
    > There was no detectable odor, even west of Amarillo when we stopped for fuel. I've driven by the Wildorado feedlot dozens of times, and I always put my A/C on recirc 5 miles before and after. The stench still gets into the car. Conditions must have been very unusual during your trip.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  "Indescribable". I could smell Dodge City, KS, 20 miles downwind. OTOH, very cool brick streets, and best taquerias I've found anywhere in the States, with a very wide selection of meats.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

What's shocking to me is that so much of Texas' energy production is __not__ from oil. I read the headline and expected to find coal at say 4% and wind at say 5%. That is, coal is so small it wouldn't take much to out so it. But both over 20%? That's a surprise.

icebraining 7y ago
Oil is more profitable for other stuff like vehicles and plastics, it'd be a financial waste to burn it for electricity.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Oh. Right. Oops. I did mean to say oil/natural gas.
  - cma 7y ago
    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)
    - adventured 7y ago
      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.
      - cma 7y ago
        Ah ok, looks like it has grown a lot the last 10 years.

Cactus2018 7y ago

The United States Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB) provides the locations of land-based and offshore wind turbines in the United States, corresponding wind project information, and turbine technical specifications. https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/ https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/

Fej 7y ago

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 bought out by the fossil fuel lobby, which has peddled the "global-warming-is-a-myth" narrative since the early 80's. Both the party and this lobby push that narrative through the right-wing media, which uninformed voters eat up, as the left-wing party has been completely demonized to them via that same media. Those who trust these right-wing media outlets often do so on principle since these outlets are not "leftist" and the "left-wing media" is "out to get them". As a result, they often do not trust other media sources. There is also the poisoning of the well that is filter bubbles on social media platforms (particularly Facebook) but I won't get into that as this comment is quite long already. Hopefully this explains our problems to an extent. (I love explaining/ranting to non-Americans as they can empathize with my incredulity.)

caseysoftware 7y ago
> The majority of the US electorate is underinformed and/or misinformed. It starts long before that. Most of the US is poorly educated and lacks critical thinking capability. That is the fault of a broken education system focused on the lowest common denominator instead of helping the top or even just supporting the middle.
- fkdo 7y ago
  I think most Americans receive a quality education that covers a lot of really valuable material. The US population isn't the most well educated, but it's unfair to our teachers to say that most Americans are poorly educated.
  - komali2 7y ago
    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 got sent to the principal's office for refusing to back down over this. 3. Dinosaurs might not have been real. 4. Evolution probably isn't real. 5. Having sex before marriage will give me herpes. 6. The civil war was a war for state's rights.

ajflores1604 7y ago

In 2015, the spot price of electricity actually dipped negative for a little bit, thanks to wind. This article gets into the context of that specific circumstance. https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes-negative-wind-power-was-so-plentiful-one-night-that-producers-paid-the-state-to-take-it.html https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes-ne...

benmccann 7y ago

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

6thaccount2 7y ago
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.
- elamje 7y ago
  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, now I’m getting downvoted, still without an explaination.
  - dang 7y ago
    It breaks the site guidelines to go on about downvoting and that often triggers further downvotes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - elamje 7y ago
      Okay, sorry dang.
  - benj111 7y ago
    If you buy green electricity such as wind power you are paying for that power to be generated. If 10% of people buy wind power, 10% of the grid should be wind. If 100% of the people buy wind power, 100% of the grid should be wind. The parent is pointing out that absent the grid being 100% wind, the electricity delivered to your house isnt necessarily from wind power. This isn't particularly helpful, or even required. An electron is an electron, where it goes doesn't really matter, just where it came from.

davidw 7y ago

Disappointed it wasn't reported as a blow to the coal industry.

SimpleMind01 7y ago

Yeah, keep on bringing them up as long as there are people who do not mind going broke paying up https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/21/texas-taxpayers-pay-the-french-government-for-wind-power-and-then-pay-the-grid-to-take-it/#1a4a766146e9 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/21/texas-ta... https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FySh5HYMVpbnNKR0drRTc3OGktWnk1cVhUQTZBMzE0cV9r/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FySh5HYMVpbnNKR0drRTc3OGk...

heyflyguy 7y ago

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.

effnorwood 7y ago

It isn’t.

dinofacedude 7y ago

As a Texan, this makes me proud