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.
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."
> 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.
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.
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.
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].
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."
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.
It depends on the region, but most of the US doesn't have too much of a problem.
There is always pushback from locals (understandable), but there has been billions in transmission built in the Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and West Texas regions to name a few areas. A lot of this is to help with the existing (ageing) infrastructure as well as helping make sure the ~22GW of currently built wind capacity can actually serve load and not be curtailed 24/7. In fact, a lot of that wind wouldn't have been built without the necessary transmission. Keep in mind that there is greater than a ~2:1 return on investment from these projects (difference in production cost in a year with the projects there and then not there) if I recall correctly.
The Western Interconnect of the US seems to favor using RAS and phase-shifting transformers in order to avoid as many transmission projects. A Remedial Action Scheme is basically an automated system that keeps certain catastrophic events from happening when a certain triggering event happens. Phase shifting transformers can help push back on certain interregional flows. I think this makes more sense in the Western Interconnect as it isn't as much of a dense network as the Eastern Interconnect. You have dense load centers in Denver, California, and Oregon/Washington with a dessert and mountain range in the middle (forms a donut). It is very rural over the vast majority of the distance, so I imagine transmission is pretty expensive and harder to justify. They do have interregional planning groups in the West though.
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).
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 even by any nature worth preserving.
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!
It can be difficult. NIMBYs are expected, but PACs running ads and lobbying against it and complex regulatory maneuvering happens too.
For intriguing stories, read about opposition to the Plains & Eastern Clean Line through Arkansas, the Grain Belt Express Clean Line through Missouri, and the story of the Wind Catcher in Arkansas. Compare and contrast this with otherwise generous laws concerning utility easements in Arkansas.
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.
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.
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.
Well, that element of Real Steelhttps://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.) :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm an ex-smoker. Generators of fossil fuels have managed to generate some very impressive narratives and all on a par with the tobacco industry. As a long term consumer of fags (30 years), I managed some pretty impressive feats of woolly thinking.
When I gave up fags, that was for me and my immediate family - I smell better now and might live longer and my lung capacity is still improving. Giving up on fossil fuels is for humanity as a whole. Do they (all of humanity) actually give a shit enough to make you want to change?
However, we should do this and I will start with a hybrid and then move to a full 'leccy only car when the charging time and range suits me. I won't save the world and it might still get a bit hot around here but I'll have a very quiet car.
Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and Beaumont as well as St James, St Charles, Laplace are where all the refineries and chemical plants got plunked. NOLA is somewhat better
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 energy system.
People tend to miss obvious things when their mortgages depend on them doing so.
Places dominated by extractive industries tend to be run by he money behind those industries. That transcends party traditionally, but has become a pillar of the right wing of the GOP since Nixon. Unfortunately, that means that people who run those industries basically control the Senate and soon the Supreme Court.
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.
For coal, maybe the focus on climate change and CO2 is the wrong way to fight this. Tell people to reduce coal to reduce CO2 for climate change and you will get a strong split along D and R lines. Tell people we need to reduce coal to reduce NOX, SO2, particulates, smog, things that people can see, breathe, and has universal agreement that it hurts lungs and health and suddenly D and R doesn't matter. Everyone can get behind that, who can argue against pollution you can see in the sky? Especially if there's a clean alternative that's cheaper. Why not focus on this point more? By winning the fight on these grounds, you also indirectly win the CO2 fight for climate change.
The father of a friend of mine lived in texas in a refinery area. He was a reasonably healthy guy, but died quite young (~50) of a brain tumor. I couldn't help but wonder.
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!
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.)
Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. All such discussions just circulate the same generic material, and it's exceedingly tedious.
What you're saying is not very far from what I've observed as a person who moved to the states ~2 years ago.
But it seems that current situation is not Fox New' fault. Read this quote from Isaac Asimov from decades ago:
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
To me it seems that Fox News is riding on the wave of this ignorance and fueling it.
Edit: I feel like I need to add another opinion. This phenomenon exists in, probably all countries.
It's just that in the U.S. the stakes are so high, that anything that could be exploited, is going to be. And exploiting under educated voters is not exactly new.
> 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.
After observing some neighbors, I tend to think that Fox news and the likes are not really misinforming but mostly a reflection of these people. Echo chambers etc etc
During periods of transition, it can help to take the meta perspective. Fox began its remake first. It began during the Obama administration. Hollywood is being tested now. Some have been late to get the memo.
[+] [-] johnohara|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] huffmsa|6 years ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] danielecook|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirimir|6 years ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] elamje|6 years ago|reply
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 will tell you 85% of refinery output goes to gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, and aviation fuel.
[+] [-] dreamcompiler|6 years ago|reply
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-...
[1] http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/8192dccad527af33c125737f002...
[+] [-] espeed|6 years ago|reply
"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
[+] [-] adrianN|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6thaccount2|6 years ago|reply
There is always pushback from locals (understandable), but there has been billions in transmission built in the Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and West Texas regions to name a few areas. A lot of this is to help with the existing (ageing) infrastructure as well as helping make sure the ~22GW of currently built wind capacity can actually serve load and not be curtailed 24/7. In fact, a lot of that wind wouldn't have been built without the necessary transmission. Keep in mind that there is greater than a ~2:1 return on investment from these projects (difference in production cost in a year with the projects there and then not there) if I recall correctly.
The Western Interconnect of the US seems to favor using RAS and phase-shifting transformers in order to avoid as many transmission projects. A Remedial Action Scheme is basically an automated system that keeps certain catastrophic events from happening when a certain triggering event happens. Phase shifting transformers can help push back on certain interregional flows. I think this makes more sense in the Western Interconnect as it isn't as much of a dense network as the Eastern Interconnect. You have dense load centers in Denver, California, and Oregon/Washington with a dessert and mountain range in the middle (forms a donut). It is very rural over the vast majority of the distance, so I imagine transmission is pretty expensive and harder to justify. They do have interregional planning groups in the West though.
[+] [-] tracker1|6 years ago|reply
A little NIMBY/FUD goes a long way.
[+] [-] H8crilA|6 years ago|reply
Both American continents still have a lot of land that's completely unutilized, not even by any nature worth preserving.
[+] [-] Brakenshire|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temp-dude-87844|6 years ago|reply
For intriguing stories, read about opposition to the Plains & Eastern Clean Line through Arkansas, the Grain Belt Express Clean Line through Missouri, and the story of the Wind Catcher in Arkansas. Compare and contrast this with otherwise generous laws concerning utility easements in Arkansas.
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|6 years ago|reply
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|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajflores1604|6 years ago|reply
This article gets into the context of that specific circumstance. https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes-ne...
[+] [-] Cactus2018|6 years ago|reply
https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/
[+] [-] dtornabene|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thebeefytaco|6 years ago|reply
You can find the data they're referencing in the "Energy by Fuel Type" tab.
[+] [-] 6thaccount2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benmccann|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6thaccount2|6 years ago|reply
The power going to your house will still be a mix of coal, natural gas, wind, solar, and others.
[+] [-] jacobush|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Whatarethese|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] komali2|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] SilasX|6 years ago|reply
http://pickensplan.com/the-plan/wind/
[+] [-] mc32|6 years ago|reply
[1]https://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind.html
[+] [-] davidw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heyflyguy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dinofacedude|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tracker1|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gerdesj|6 years ago|reply
When I gave up fags, that was for me and my immediate family - I smell better now and might live longer and my lung capacity is still improving. Giving up on fossil fuels is for humanity as a whole. Do they (all of humanity) actually give a shit enough to make you want to change?
However, we should do this and I will start with a hybrid and then move to a full 'leccy only car when the charging time and range suits me. I won't save the world and it might still get a bit hot around here but I'll have a very quiet car.
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|6 years ago|reply
Places dominated by extractive industries tend to be run by he money behind those industries. That transcends party traditionally, but has become a pillar of the right wing of the GOP since Nixon. Unfortunately, that means that people who run those industries basically control the Senate and soon the Supreme Court.
[+] [-] tootie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bit_logic|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|6 years ago|reply
The father of a friend of mine lived in texas in a refinery area. He was a reasonably healthy guy, but died quite young (~50) of a brain tumor. I couldn't help but wonder.
[+] [-] plazmatic|6 years ago|reply
Lets get some real leadership back in the White House in 2020!
[+] [-] Fej|6 years ago|reply
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.)
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20539876 and marked it off-topic.
[+] [-] emilsedgh|6 years ago|reply
But it seems that current situation is not Fox New' fault. Read this quote from Isaac Asimov from decades ago:
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
To me it seems that Fox News is riding on the wave of this ignorance and fueling it.
Edit: I feel like I need to add another opinion. This phenomenon exists in, probably all countries.
It's just that in the U.S. the stakes are so high, that anything that could be exploited, is going to be. And exploiting under educated voters is not exactly new.
[+] [-] caseysoftware|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] agumonkey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] espeed|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] effnorwood|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SimpleMind01|6 years ago|reply
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/21/texas-ta...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FySh5HYMVpbnNKR0drRTc3OGk...