
Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time - rchaudhary
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/25/us/texas-wind-energy-trnd/index.html
======
johnohara
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
And the smell. Describe the smell for us.

~~~
johnohara
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
> 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.

------
mirimir
> 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
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...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_refining_in_the_United_States))

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
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...](https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/dynamic-manufacturing-energy-
sankey-tool-2010-units-trillion-btu)

~~~
CydeWeys
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
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.

------
adrianN
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.

~~~
H8crilA
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.

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

------
chiefalchemist
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
Oil is more profitable for other stuff like vehicles and plastics, it'd be a
financial waste to burn it for electricity.

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

~~~
cma
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
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
Ah ok, looks like it has grown a lot the last 10 years.

------
ajflores1604
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-
ne...](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)

------
Cactus2018
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/)

------
dtornabene
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
Primary Source:
[http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172485/DemandandEnerg...](http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/172485/DemandandEnergy2019.xlsx)
(Excel file)

You can find the data they're referencing in the "Energy by Fuel Type" tab.

~~~
6thaccount2
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.

------
benmccann
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
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
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.

~~~
benj111
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.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I really think that should say, "If 10% of people buy wind power, _at least_
10% of the grid should be wind."

Alternatively, if folks suddenly demand wind and the supply is not there, I'd
think there should be some sort of way for the companies to earmark money to
meet the wind demand. This is especially true if the company is charging an
optional premium fee for "green energy".

------
jacobush
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.) :-)

------
Whatarethese
Makes sense Texas is one flat windy state.

~~~
mc32
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
Look at the ribbon of purple offshore!

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

------
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.

------
dinofacedude
As a Texan, this makes me proud

------
tracker1
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.

~~~
WhompingWindows
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.

~~~
6thaccount2
I think many energy companies would love (or at least not be opposed) to get a
large amount of renewables and energy storage...etc. The problem is that doing
so costs money (a lot of it) which means raising customer rates which are
highly regulated. Many of those companies are still paying off coal assets and
aren't allowed by regulators to retire those units until they're paid off even
though they aren't economic anymore due to falling gas prices and the
prevalence of renewables. I'm not saying that the system is perfect, rather
there are so many many factors at play here and it isn't nearly as simple as
people think. Make no mistake that transitioning to 100% renewables is a
monumental task, but we're getting closer all the time.

With that being said, we're starting to see coal being retired at a very fast
pace Nationwide and no new ones are really expected to be built. Change is
happening every day in this industry which has traditionally moved at a
glacial pace. Please do keep up the interest and spirit.

One of the key industry drivers here are the production tax credits (wind and
now solar + storage) that come from government and make wind so crazy
economical right now to where they can have extremely negative offers (think
corn and ethanol). This is why it is painful to me to hear about politicians
being bought out (ok, I'm sure some have fallen to for lobbyists) as the
production tax credits have done so much for clean energy. Public opinion is
also important in this space as many utilities are making green investments
because it is good for PR.

~~~
jabl
In deregulated power markets, which AFAIK covers a fairly large fraction of US
electricity supply (including Texas) power generators are businesses like in
any random industry. The transmission grid, otoh, is a natural monopoly and is
tightly regulated (or outright publicly owned).

In such markets, uneconomical units tend to be shut down fairly quickly. Which
in the absence of a some type of price on carbon (be it a carbon tax, cap and
trade, clean portfolio standards or whatever) unfortunately can mean replacing
clean energy with dirtier but cheaper.

~~~
6thaccount2
You're correct that most of the US is in a power market. I'd still call it
regulated though. There are some regions like TVA, Colorado area, and BPA that
do their own thing, but BPA is joining CAISO's secondary market (energy
imbalance) which is a step towards a full day ahead market which does
commitment and dispatch instead of just dispatch (commitment and the sharing
of reserves is where the majority of cost savings occur).

The other parts of the US participate in either ERCOT, CAISO, MISO, SPP, ISO-
NE, PJM, or NYISO which all do commitment and dispatch. ERCOT is a little
unusual as they don't co-optimize reserves in their real-time 5-minute market.
Each of these markets has an independent market monitor that looks for
participant gaming and other market anomalies. FERC mandated this after some
heavy abuse in the north east from a utility where the fine was divided up and
went to funding the market monitoring groups. Either this group or sometimes
the market software itself looks for instances of market power being
demonstrated. For example, if you're unit is sitting right on top of a
congested area and your offer jumps up a certain percent, the software pushes
you back to the approved offer that the market monitor verified is your true
marginal cost. So the market is deregulated, but there is still plenty of
regulation of a sort.

In a perfect market, yes you would have uneconomical units shut down quickly,
but this isn't the stock market and there are many reasons why this doesn't
happen all the time. Maybe you need it for capacity reasons (markets have
rules on how much you need to reliably serve load or they even have capacity
markets) as wind and solar aren't as reliable as thermal generation.

~~~
jabl
In this case with regulated vs deregulated I meant whether there is some kind
of open access scheme for generators, or whether there is a utility with both
power generation and transmission in a monopoly position. Of course, even in
such a deregulated market there are laws and regulations that apply to
generators.

> ERCOT is a little unusual as they don't co-optimize reserves in their real-
> time 5-minute market.

ERCOT has their ORDC which IIUC they are happy with.

------
plazmatic
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!

------
Fej
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
> 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
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
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.

~~~
wahern
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 because of the sun reflected on their
skin...". I still learned 99% of the same American History as everybody else.
Most of us were rolling our eyes in class, anyhow, and while these types of
teachers are not uncommon, they're not exactly common, either. It's more like
that they're tolerated because it's understood that they represent a
persistent aspect of the local culture that isn't going anywhere. And for the
most part for any particular subject you're learning from multiple different
teachers at different times, so it's not like you don't learn the legitimate
subject material. It's more like you're taught what today we call "alternative
facts", and in practice they're really only taken in by the same segment of
the population that's creating those facts. If a kid grows up steeped in this
culture at home, the presence or absence of it at school is almost irrelevant.
The important point is that they're at least exposed to the real facts--which
they are, perhaps with the exception of sex education.

Combined with the fact that most people aren't particularly intellectually
curious and don't retain much of the _detail_ , it's sufficient that they're
taught the proper material in broad strokes. And they are.

Plus, after having traveled the world some as an adult, most places around the
world--even in places Americans look up to as more "civilized"\--have similar
issues where local biases and mythologies are taught as fact when they're
glaringly, painfully wrong-headed to more objective observers. While most of
the kids in my class were rolling their eyes, there are kids in similar
classes in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and even Europe
eagerly taking notes on some ridiculous and patently prejudiced narrative.

The weird thing about being American is that we've been having an intense,
rancorous, open argument about ourselves and our prejudices for at least 50,
if not 100, or even 200 years. Everybody else gets to watch it, too. You'd
think Americans are the most racist, bigoted, backward people on the face of
the earth. In reality, it's just that we were one of the first--and still one
of the few--to recognize our bigotry and prejudices systematically. Not just
by an intellectual, bourgeois elite. 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. In most parts of the
world people will treat claims that group A is worse than group B no more
worthy of suspicion than claims that the sun rises in the East and sets in the
West. Except for Americans--everybody knows how racist Americans are. Racism
is an American problem. It's why they're talking about it so much.

To be clear, we are racist and we are biased. I don't want to say that we're
any more or less these things than somewhere else; I'm not sure what value
there is in that comparison.[1] But there's a level of self-reflection here
that is absent or at least lesser in most of the rest of the world.

[1] I mean, we had slavery here. That's crucial. But so did most of the
Americas. Slavery was at least as formative to Brazil as it was to the U.S.,
and any curious traveler to Venezuela, Columbia, and even Ecuador can see
shadows of the same anti-black prejudices and ostracism we're familiar with in
the U.S., entirely home grown and stemming from their native histories of
slavery. It's just these shadows are often simply considered as the way things
are supposed to be, though I think Brazil is more like the U.S. than other
countries in how they've internalized a more sophisticated ability to reflect
on these things.

~~~
komali2
> 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?

~~~
wahern
So, for example, where once people might say that blacks are X, Germans are Y,
or Jews Z because of intrinsic qualities--godly design, genetics, or whatever
mechanism du jure--today such people might instead admit, at least to some
extent, the historical accidents and cultural forces that assigned the
supposed group traits.

So where once upon a time people claimed that blacks were more prone to
criminal behavior by their nature, today they might say that rap culture
teaches and perpetuates violence. They might admit that slavery and Jim Crow
is at the root of black poverty, but then they'll say something like, "but now
they have equality of opportunity", implying that any failures to advance are
_personal_ failures.

Jews are good with money not because they're greedy, baby eating Jesus killers
but because they were relegated to that role by limitations on the types of
work they were permitted it perform in Medieval Europe. (Even many liberals
believe this, and while I suppose it's infinitely more true than Jews being
baby eaters I think that narrative is much more self-serving and misleading
than people realize.)

Such thinking often starts and ends in the same places in terms reinforcing
hierarchies, but it's circuitous. These are narratives that people engage with
more critically, as opposed to passively receiving and internalizing ideas
about intrinsic traits. They tweak them to incorporate their own lived
experiences, and the narratives are generally more dynamic. Crucially, they
recognize the role of extrinsic factors.

Or take the narrative about how women's bodies can prevent pregnancy after a
rape: it's obvious people who espouse this narrative are attempting to resolve
some serious cognitive dissonance about a woman's autonomy. But that means
they've already _internalized_ the legitimacy of a woman's autonomy, it's just
that they're not prepared to let it displace other deeply held ideas about
women's role in society.

Even the most progressive Americans and Europeans struggle with the "problem"
of the hijab. It's less of a problem for Southern conservatives--the hijab is
clearly a symbol of male religious domination that should be opposed. It's
just so weird. You would think Southern evangelicals would better understand
how a women could legitimately and voluntarily take up such a strict cultural
discipline. Where I lived many evangelical women, especially the Pentecostals,
wore ankle length skirts, plain clothing, and kept long, straight hair.

This is all progress, I think. In many, perhaps most places in the world these
aren't questions you ask. People will literally say that racism doesn't exist
one moment and the next moment they'll explain how group A are the garbage
collectors and group B the shop keepers as if their society was a carefully
and perfectly constructed utopia. They tell you the sexes are coequal while
finding the notion of a woman CEO preposterous. And I suppose in some way
they're right. Can there be racism or sexism when people can't even conceive
of an alternative world, or at least conceive of it as being anything other
than farcical?

------
SimpleMind01
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-
ta...](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://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FySh5HYMVpbnNKR0drRTc3OGk...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9FySh5HYMVpbnNKR0drRTc3OGktWnk1cVhUQTZBMzE0cV9r/view)

