Where The Texas Winds Blow | Watts Up With That?
"There’s a typically hyper, deceptive, and Pollyanna article in the Houston Chronicle with the headline “Texas has enough sun and wind to quit coal,
Rice researchers say“. You gotta watch out for these folks, it’s the old bait and switch.
Because sure enough, as they say, there’s more sun and wind in Texas than would be required to quit coal.
But then, there’s enough sun alone to quit everything.
Texas uses about 450 terawatt-hours (million megawatt-hours) of electricity per year.
And there are about a million terawatt-hours of sunshine falling on Texas every year.
In short, every year the sun pours down on Texas about two thousand times the amount of energy that Texas uses in the form of electricity.
So there’s more than enough sun and wind, just as they say … but is it economical to harvest it?
That’s the real question.
Let’s start by looking at the evolution of the fuel mix in Texas over time. Figure 1 shows the situation from 1990 to 2016.
Figure 1. Evolution of Texas electricity sources by fuel, 1990 – 2016. Other biomass includes agricultural byproducts, landfill gas, biogenic municipal solid waste, other biomass (solid, liquid and gas) and sludge waste. Other gases include blast furnace gas, and other manufactured and waste gases derived from fossil fuels. Other includes non-biogenic municipal solid waste, batteries, chemicals, hydrogen, pitch, purchased steam, sulfur, tire-derived fuels, waste heat, and miscellaneous technologies. Note: Totals may not equal sum of components because of independent rounding. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-923, “Power Plant Operations Report” and predecessor forms.
Recall that we set out to see if Texas wind energy is economical..."
Read on.
