Guest contextualizing by David Middleton
Everyone knows that Texas leads the US in wind power capacity… And probably leads most other countries too. In 2017, installed wind power capacity in Texas exceeded that of coal… BFD.
Wind Power Capacity Has Surpassed Coal in Texas
Scientists at UT predict that by 2019, the state will get more energy from wind than coal.
BY SONIA SMITH
DATE DEC 2, 2017Wind power capacity edged out coal for the first time in the Texas history last week after a new 155-megawatt wind farm in Scurry County came online. The farm in question is the Fluvanna Wind Energy Project, located on some 32,000 acres leased from more than 130 landowners.
Fluvanna pushed total wind power capacity in the state to more than 20,000 megawatts, while coal capacity stands at 19,800 megawatts and is slated to fall to 14,700 megawatts by the end of 2018 thanks to planned coal powerplant closures. Next year, Luminant will shutter three coal-fired plants—Monticello, Sandow, and Big Brown—and San Antonio’s CPS Energy will close J.T. Deely Station. Wind capacity in the state will reach 24,400 megawatts by the end of 2018, according to projections from Joshua Rhodes, a research fellow at UT Austin’s Energy Institute.
But capacity is one thing, electricity generation is another. In the first ten months of 2017, wind generated 17.2 percent of power in the state, and coal 31.9 percent, according to ERCOT. But wind should soon see large gains there. “By our analysis, in 2019 we’ll have more energy from wind than coal,” Rhodes said.
[…]
Wake me up when wind is catching up to crude oil and natural gas…
Data Sources:
- ERCOT Texas electricity generation by source.
- US EIA Texas crude oil production.
- US EIA Texas natural gas production.
- BP 2018 Statistical Review of World Energy Mtoe conversions.
They say that like it’s a good thing. Like starvation and elimination of the more reliable and less subsidized base load insurers is a necessity.
Clap, clap. Time to end the subsidies?
Well played you dirty rotten no good scoundrel Texas snide-winders! An accomplishment to be proud of. Although I will admit I do appreciate ya takin’ full advantage of Moonbeam…
“California’s share of the proxy PTC tax burden is $330.8 million, while wind producers in the state received $134.9 million in proxy PTC subsidies, indicating a net payment of just under $196 million in 2012—the largest net payment we estimated. Texas, on the other hand, was the largest net taker of subsidies—wind producers took in $642.5 million in proxy PTC subsidies in 2012, while taxpayers in Texas contributed $248 million toward the related tax burden for a net transfer of $394.5 million.”
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/State-Level-Impact-of-Federal-Wind-Subsidies.pdf
dataplate (false) driven capacity ( grid often backed by coil/oil/etc) while coil/oil/nuke/etc true figures.
Look where Texas is in the 2018 NERC grid reliability stakes (wacky races):
https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20DL/NERC_SRA_05252018_Final.pdf
Coal capacity utilization factor~85 percent. Wind capacity factor ~30 percent. Not even close. Installed capacity is NOT the correct comparison metric. Wind electricity production less than. coal by about half.
With all the wind power installed how do electricity prices compare to states with much lower wind installation? Like Massachusetts for instance?
Like David, I pay 11 cents a kWh in DFW.
MA residential is 11-13 cents/ kWh, quite close to Texas.
Not according the the EIA…
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a
When I moved from Texas to New York I was shocked at my electric bill. I was also surprised that people think of their bill different. In Texas your rate was what you paid for your meter to turn. Nobody cared about what portion was fuel, production, or transmission. Kind of like when you buy gas for your car you don’t separate the pipeline from refining. For some stupid reason that I can’t fathom people in New York think of their electric bill as the price of electricity separated from the transmission and distribution cost. As if I care what the cost at the plant is. The EIA number is that all-in (generation + delivery) rather than the generation only number.
Not sure how it works in MA, but that might be part of the difference between your rate and the EIA.
With TXU and Reliant, there’s a per kWh charge and then a few fixed charges for delivery (Oncor/Centerpoint) and taxes. IIRC our base is 9.9¢/kWh. The other charges bring the average up to about 11¢/kW… We have a big house, with a lot of energy-intensive gadgets. One of the coolest things about Texas is the more we use the lower our per kWh charge gets.
As oil is not used to produce electricity much at all in the USA, the graph is comparing apples to oranges, or cheese to Wednesday. Why bother to post such a misleading figure?
The graph is as apples and apples as it gets. It is a graph of *energy* production.
Not electricity.
It conveys the same information as this graph of the whole world.
True, but, energy involves resources from the Earth. Electricity involves amperage delivered into people’s homes. Lots of people know this, but lots more do not.
Still wonder why you posted this. Texas has lots of mineral-rights resources. I was hired by Gulf States Utilities out of Beaumont TX in 1981, Alternate -Energy Engineer. We had one of the first wind-turbines in the state, at the Sabine Pass, a tiny one, 25 kWatts. It delivered 7 kW on average, 25 % or so. My boss stated in the monthly report to the VP that it had delivered 7 kilowattt-hours per hour, based on a 24-hour day. I asked him what other kind of days there were. Obviously I did not last long after that
Electric utility engineers think in terms of money, as do most good engineers.
You seem to be confusing electricity with mineral resources. Maybe it makes a good story, but not much sense.
Was not my title. It was Special Programs Engineer. Had to think about that one, a long time ago.
I also worked on probably the first Gas Turbine-Combined Cycle project. This was a Westinghouse machine, 110 MW, largest one in the world at that time. GSU had bought it as a simple peaking unit, and it was converted to maybe the first Natural-Gas-Fired GT-CC unit in the world. Westinghouse engineers added many probes inside the turbine. One of them failed under load, and the turbine shed many blades, and there was a shower of chunks of titanium on-site. I was not there, I am fine, do not want anyone to worry.
Those were the days…
Michael
Dave,
Of all the people I have read on wind power your analyses is probably the most fair. I think you would recognize that South Australia, Germany, UK, and ERCOT have all integrated large amounts of wind, but only one has done so in an economically responsible manner. The biggest problems of the other regions is not the generation technology, but the government market manipulation. Even in ERCOT market is still skewed due to subsidies, but even without the subsidies there would likely be some non-negligible amount of wind built in ERCOT.
That said, Texas has some really good wind resources, and you can’t take the panhandle and extrapolate it to Connecticut.
Texas also uses a lot of Nat Gas and was built for a region with enormous seasonal swings, and so the installed gas capacity is able to meet peak summer demand even if the wind stops. Since that is already installed and you have an energy only market new wind is able to drive price down since wind does not get guaranteed returns on capital, and gas units are making their day to day operational decisions based on the variable cost of fuel. This does not imply a 100% wind future, but acknowledges when you have a well managed grid with substantial wind resources there is a place for wind turbines.
I would guess that ERCOT is going to saturate at ~30% of annual power production, but I am guessing you would estimate closer to 25%.
All that said, you don’t claim that wind only ever drives prices through the roof (how could you living in Dallas?).
You don’t claim it can do everything. You don’t make stupid suggestions like tying it to metric tons worth of Lithium. Your writing is a breath of fresh air.
My views toward wind are:
It works pretty well, where it works.
It doesn’t always suck.
And, if carbon emissions are a concern… wind breaks even.
And if carbon emissions are not a concern, where’s net cost/benefit line then? One blue box to the left, to the left? Everything they’ve sown is a box to the left?
Mentally erase “New emissions” from the left and “Avoided emissions” from the right. If you take the carbon bogeyman out of the picture, gas kicks @ur momisugly$$.
Snarling Dolphin, “Carbon” emissions (soot) are a concern, “Carbon Dioxide” emissions on the other hand are not as they are beneficial to the Earth’s biosphere (plant food). By referring to CO2 as “carbon” is a greenie slight of hand that needs to be pointed out whenever someone confuses the two.
Wake me up when any of the wind energy is dispatch-able.
Coal gen is decreasing because we are fracking natural gas, plus Obama crawled up their backside for the 8 years he was in office. The article states the maximum potential power output if all the windmills were operating at 100%? Let’s see a baseload graph please. I bet wind is less than 2%.