One-Third of Texas Was Running on Wind Power This Week
On Wednesday, March 27th, the largest state in the contiguous United States got almost one-third of its electricity by harnessing the wind. According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the bulk of the Lone Star State’s power grid, a record-breaking 10,296 MW of electricity was whipped up by wind turbines. That’s enough to provide 29 percent of the state’s power, and to keep the lights on in over 5 million homes.
What did it cost to build that wind generation infrastructure? How much more (or less) than building equivalent capacity of oil or gas fired modern plants? How seasonal is the wind that generated that record amount of power?
What is the deprecation of Wind Generation compared to Oil or Gas and is there any reason to believe that these wind turbines will last longer than the billions of dollars of turbines built in the eighties, nineties and later that today are abandoned eyesores?
For Gods sake, you’re a Texan! build a goddamn nuclear power plant and be done with it.
P.S. One Third is 33%, not 29%. Or is that “common core” math? (And No! I don’t want to register with Disqus to leave a comment!)