| ▲ | lee_ars a day ago |
| Texas specifically has heavily politicized and demonized wind power, in spite of having massive successes with it prior to 2016 and being a leading producer of it. Solar isn't as bad, but is still seen as "leftist." The political landscape in TX is vastly more friendly to natural gas. In other words, they are using gas turbines because the politicians are stupid. |
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| ▲ | yonaguska a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| They are using gas because it's more reliable during peak usage. Wind generation in Texas isn't optimal throughout the entire state and conditions aren't optimal all the time. They still use wind, but from a pure numbers perspective, gas infra already exists, the gas is there, and gas is more reliable, so wind isn't always the cheapest form of energy. There are also diminishing returns on just adding more wind turbines. |
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| ▲ | preg_match 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Gas is also incredibly cheap in Texas. Way, way cheaper than you would think. In some parts, it's negative price - you will be paid to use it. We have entirely too much gas, which is actually a problem because ideally we want to discourage its use. So yes, wind and solar are cheap. Depending on where in Texas you are, gas is cheaper. |
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| ▲ | s1artibartfast 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Texas leads the nation in solar installed and solar planned. How do you reconcile that with your theory? |
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| ▲ | cwal37 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | *utility-scale solar, not solar overall | | |
| ▲ | s1artibartfast 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Utility scale, solar installs, and will be total solar by end of year. Texas accounts for 40% of new solar capacity installed per year at this point. It does lag behind an inefficient and expensive rooftop solar, and has no State mandate for homeowners to build it. That said, I think this is enough to show that Texas doesn't hate solar, so there's probably a different reason for selecting gas to support the data center. If I were to Hazard I guess, it would be stability and demand curve |
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| ▲ | xienze a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think you might want to download new anti-Texas talking points. Texas is number two in the nation in solar power: https://seia.org/media/16020/texas.pdf/ Texas is not at all against renewables. Maybe, just maybe, whatever axes the people building data centers are optimizing on rule out solar/wind over factors other than "renewables are for leftists, so fuck that we're gonna burn gas even if it's more expensive." |
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| ▲ | lee_ars a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > I think you might want to download new anti-Texas talking points. No need—the current ones are uploaded directly into my mailbox regularly by Randy Weber, my district rep. | |
| ▲ | shakna a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | 15th for non-residential? Sounds like people overwhelmingly put it on their roofs, and politicians avoid it. | | |
| ▲ | infecto a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Did you miss the 1st utility part? It can be quite hard for nonresidential users to retrofit for solar. Not impossible but sometimes not an easy solve. | | |
| ▲ | shakna 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sorry, I do have a bias. > 11.40% of TX electricity is from solar This is... Not a huge statement to me. My home state is at 16% solar, and we're calling it inadequate. [0] Its not a 1-to-1, as we have probably 10% of the people, and 1/3 of the landmass. More spread out, different demand, so a completely different landscape. But 11% is not some victory dance. [0] https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/about-energy/news/news-stories... |
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| ▲ | xienze a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Avoid it to the tune of being in the top third (for now, they're projected to keep growing), behind only blue states that are known for aggressive rollout and/or climates that are overall more favorable (i.e., Texas gets its fair share of sun but not quite like CA and NV, for example)? Is that your idea of avoiding it because politicians want to own the libs? |
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| ▲ | andyjohnson0 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I often wonder why conservatives have such a problem with renewable energy. I can certainly believe that oil and gas pay better bribes, and that this incentivises a certain kind of politician who seem to be over-represented among conservatives in the US. But that doesn't explain the widespread dislike among the conservative end of the general population. Is it just groupthink or Overton Window -nudging using social media? Or is there something more psychological going on? Some kind of disgust reaction? |
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| ▲ | andrepd 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | One would think that self-proclaimed "conservatives" would like to conserve the natural world... Long gone are the days of Teddy Roosevelt that's for sure. |
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| ▲ | infecto a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
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| ▲ | hahahaa a day ago | parent | next [-] | | What if..... the USA had a national grid and what if.... they connected solar and wind across the country and for kicks, invested in storage. | | |
| ▲ | infecto a day ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | inigyou a day ago | parent [-] | | > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. | | |
| ▲ | infecto a day ago | parent [-] | | Eh you are posting hyperbole that has nothing to do with this thread. I made a single quip while furthering my position. Posting rules like you are doing are even worse. You have a downvote. | | |
| ▲ | defrost a day ago | parent [-] | | The person you are replying to is not the person that made "the Reddit style posts". | | |
| ▲ | infecto a day ago | parent [-] | | Replace Reddit with hyperbolic statements that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. There was a wave of high points less than 1 year old accounts posting highly hyperbolic statements that had nothing to do with the topic or were so far off from how physics works that it’s a bit silly. The person I responded to is only posting because I disagreed with them in this thread elsewhere. Going back to the original rule the point is to not have endless meta discussions. I am skirting it imo but I included rationale for my argument. But instead of continuing a meta discussion the better option for someone like you would be to downvote it. |
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| ▲ | inigyou a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Trump paid a wind farm company $1,200,000,000 of taxpayer money to stop building a wind farm | | | |
| ▲ | lee_ars a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | infecto a day ago | parent [-] | | The personal jab was unnecessary. If it’s because I called out your hyperbole it might have been better to try to educate me instead of trying to name call or be rude in every sentence. Hard to even read your response it starts so low. Sorry! You’re also mixing up Texas energy policy with the engineering requirements of an AI data center. Those are different discussions. The claim that Texas wind generation is “back to 2017 levels” isn’t supported by the data. Texas continues to add large amounts of wind and especially solar. Solar has been dominating though as a percentage of generation and wind has fallen behind. Wind input costs are up quite a bit since 2017-2021 era. I am sure some of this might have political motivations but if the economics are in solar companies are going to build solar farms. The original point still stands: if you need guaranteed 24/7 on site power for a massive data center, gas turbines are a much more practical solution than trying to achieve the same reliability with wind, solar, and batteries. Your post is just a political derailment that does not hit why Amazon did what they did. |
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