In a first, wind power is second-leading U.S. source of electricity in one day

[babylonsister]

Some more good news!


In a first, wind power is second-leading U.S. source of electricity in one day
Yahoo News
David Knowles
April 6, 2022, 3:05 PM


Power generated by wind turbines in the United States hit a milestone last week, becoming the second-highest source of electricity in the country for a 24-hour period, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Wind turbines generated more than 2,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in the U.S. on Tuesday, March 29, more than was provided by nuclear and coal power plants that day. Wind power, which is renewable and does not release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, still trailed the electricity produced by natural gas, but it was the first time in U.S. history that wind turbines outperformed nuclear and coal power.

Confirmed: That was the first *day* that wind was the 2nd-largest source of U.S. electricity generation, according to our data (going back to July 1, 2018).

— EIA (@EIAgov) April 5, 2022

On its website, the EIA notes, "The amount of wind electricity generation has grown significantly in the past 30 years. Advances in wind energy technology have decreased the cost of producing electricity from wind. Government requirements and financial incentives for renewable energy in the United States and in other countries have contributed to growth in wind power."

more...

https://www.aol.com/news/first-wind-power-second-leading-220541886.html

[WarGamer]

1. ONE nuclear power plant equals 431 Commercial Wind Turbines.

[Scrivener7]

4. 431 commercial wind turbines don't melt down and threaten all life on earth.

[WarGamer]

6. neither do modern nuclear power plants.

[Scrivener7]

8. OK. They only threaten life for a few miles around. Wind turbines don't do that either.

[Amishman]

9. THIS!!! Nuclear is the only viable answer to counter climate change at this time

Solar and wind are too unreliable on a day to day basis, and we lack viable energy storage options to smooth out that variability.

Nuclear is the answer, specifically newer gen 3 and gen 4 designs.

To prove my point on the variability of output, graph of UK wind power generation from 2021. Extremely variable and unreliable day to day. (ignore the green line of price data, it is not of interest for this discussion)

[dsp3000]

15. There needs to be a little bit of everything, including nuclear

Solar has come a LONG way, with battery backup it is an extremely viable option at the grid level. Charge during the day, discharge battery backup in the evening. We need nuclear on a large scale as well. Talk about job creation. We need everything, especially if EV's take off. the already obsolete grid is going to get worked even harder than it already is

[uponit7771]

30. +1, Germany could lead world in SMR tech since too many in US are sKeered

[Bonx]

20. No, but the huge blades end up in landfills

"While most of a turbine can be recycled or find a second life on another wind farm, researchers estimate the U.S. will have more than 720,000 tons of blade material to dispose of over the next 20 years, a figure that doesn't include newer, taller higher-capacity versions.

There aren't many options to recycle or trash turbine blades, and what options do exist are expensive, partly because the U.S. wind industry is so young. It's a waste problem that runs counter to what the industry is held up to be: a perfect solution for environmentalists looking to combat climate change, an attractive investment for companies such as Budweiser and Hormel Foods, and a job creator across the Midwest and Great Plains."

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy

[Scrivener7]

21. This is the comparison everyone makes. Am I the only one who finds it dopey?

[Bonx]

24. Probably.

[uponit7771]

27. Democrats need to step into 21st century when it comes to nuke knowledge

[SoonerPride]

2. But how much cancer did it cause that day?

Great news.

In Oklahoma where the wind indeed “comes sweeping down the plains” we have a lot of wind turbines and are putting up more all the time.

[Shermann]

3. But but how many eagles had to die??

[Blues Heron]

5. That is nothing to sneeze at!

Also, unlike nuclear power which relies on mined, processed fuel, windpower fuel is both free and carbon free.

[electric_blue68]

7. THIS *is* also exciting news!!! Ty. 👍

[NickB79]

10. Without storage systems, a lot of that energy is intentionally wasted

There's a limit to how much local grids can accommodate. We really need either massive storage systems, or a lot of new high-voltage lines across the entire US to distribute excess electricity from high-wind to low-wind areas

[womanofthehills]

11. Lots of high voltage monster transmission lines in NM

However, most of all the wind power generated is going to Arizona and California. I wish it was being used locally. There doesn’t seem to be a need for storage.

You almost can’t make this up. Because all or almost all of wind power generated in NM is going to other western states, PNM who now owns the wind farms asked our governor to let it reopen a coal fired plant or we would have rolling blackouts in NM this summer. Looks like it’s still all about money- not clean air.

[Retired Engineer Bob]

13. Could electric vehicles and a smart grid

Be part of the solution?

https://www.vox.com/recode/22969335/california-gm-electric-cars-power-grid-batteries-blackouts

[NickB79]

14. Yep.

[hunter]

16. Well, do you want to prematurely wear out your expensive batteries to benefit your neighbors...

... especially those assholes down the street who don't give a flying fuck about the environment, use a gazillion kilowatt hours a month air conditioning their open patio and irrigating their useless lawns, who roll coal whenever they pass you on the street because you once complained about their kids riding their dirt bikes on your property and terrorizing your animals?

No thanks.

That's always going to be the point of failure of a "smart grid." At least thirty percent of the people in this nation are deplorables who will abuse the system, taking far more from it than they give. I can't imagine any sort of grid smart enough to lock them out.

There's greater justice to be found in a dumb electric grid that doesn't grant special favors to wealthier consumers.

[uponit7771]

28. Yes, absolutely ... currently night energy in US is wasted even with FF turbines

[lagomorph777]

19. 120 million American homes already have an energy storage system.

It's called a water heater.

With a fairly simple upgrade, the heater's operation can be synchronized to the ebb and flow on the grid. This one change would be the equivalent of adding 15GW of baseload generating capacity.

[uponit7771]

29. +1,

[womanofthehills]

12. NM wind project

Pattern Energy Completes New Mexico Wind Project

A California-based renewable energy company says work is complete on four wind farms in New Mexico that total more than a gigawatt of capacity.


Pattern Energy officials announced Thursday that the Western Spirit Wind project has started commercial operations. The company had billed it as the largest single-phase construction of renewable power in the U.S.




https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2022-01-06/pattern-energy-completes-new-mexico-wind-project

[Ron Green]

17. After reviewing the responses here, I've got to remind us all that the only reliable

solution to the power generation problem is to use less. Much less.

We need to embrace economic and population de-growth if we’re serious about long-term human life on this planet.

[Scrivener7]

18. This! But no one ever talks about this! It's the only answer.

[hunter]

25. That's easy to say, but how do we accomplish it?

Unfortunately we've worked ourselves into a corner and become entirely dependent on high density energy sources for food, clean water, and comfortable shelter. Without these high density energy sources, now mostly derived from fossil fuels, I figure half of earth's human population wouldn't survive. Our continued use of fossil fuels will have similar consequences.

That's the primary reason I changed my mind about nuclear power. I used to be a radical anti-nuclear activist. Now I think it's the only path out of this mess.

Even conventional light water nuclear power plants, with all the usual circuses that accompany their construction, are preferable to any type of fossil fuel plant.

These light water reactors only extract a small fraction of the potential energy in their fuel. This used fuel can be stored safely on site indefinitely awaiting reprocessing for use in more efficient reactors.

The technology already exists to use fissionable materials that have already been mined as fuel. This includes used fuel from light water reactors, depleted uranium, plutonium from nuclear weapons, thorium and uranium extracted from mine tailings, etc..

The reason uranium has always been used in once-through fuel cycles is because it's readily available, and it's cheap as well if we ignore the environmental impacts of mining it.

Just as we ignore the much, much greater environmental impacts of fossil fuels.

[Ron Green]

26. I don't believe nuclear's a "path," but I could be wrong.

Last edited Fri Apr 8, 2022, 08:26 PM - Edit history (1)

I think anything that allows us to prolong the population/consumption bubble is not a way to keep humans viable on earth.

Paring the human population back to half is necessary, but not sufficient, to make a future. We must also stop making plastics and other chemicals that alter the biosphere, as well as (and this is the most important and least likely) turn away from an accumulator/aggrandizer mindset and toward a loving and supportive creature of the earth.

“Human nature” being what it is, I don’t expect this last to ever happen - so all this is probably moot.

[hunter]

31. It's a frequent quip of mine that if I knew the secret of cheap fusion energy...

... I'd keep it to myself. With that humanity would eat the entire biosphere.

That used to be one of the reasons I opposed ordinary fission power plants as well. They work.

I thought "peak oil" was a good thing, it would limit the damage we do to this planet. Alas, there is plenty of natural gas in the ground. It's best we leave it there.

I think we should be paying people to experiment with lifestyles having a very small environmental footprint. We'd judge the success of these experiments in terms of happiness. With any luck these lifestyles would be widely adopted, even by people who currently have large environmental footprints. Who doesn't want to be happy?

This thing we now call economic "productivity" isn't productivity at all, it is in fact a direct measure of the damage we are doing to earth's natural environment and our own human spirit.

[hunter]

22. Wind power will only prolong our dependence on natural gas.

Utilities generally burn natural gas when the wind isn't blowing, and use it to stabilize the grid when it is blowing.

Wind isn't an economically viable energy source without natural gas "backup" power. Batteries can take up the stabilization function to some extent but energy storage schemes capable of providing backup power for days, weeks, or months are fanciful. In hybrid natural gas / wind power systems natural gas is usually the greater source of power.

Aggressive renewable energy schemes in Germany have turned out to be a political and environmental catastrophe because they were dependent on Russian natural gas.

Natural gas is by far the greatest threat to earth's natural environment, largely because people think it's "better than coal" and gas supports their renewable energy schemes.

[Finishline42]

32. While that is true

I think what is missing from your scenario is what happened this year - a doubling in the price of natural gas which had utilities reverting back to coal - which isn't a long term solution.

What wind, solar, battery storage and HVDC transmission lines do is use the cheapest power when ever it is available - which of course isn't always. But when it is, it cuts into when natural gas plants operate (nuclear as well) which increases their costs (fewer hours to average fixed costs means higher cost per kWh). Which mean the utilities will be investing more in wind and solar.

[newdayneeded]

23. This post reminded me of Rush

I remember there is a "turn the lights out" day, and asshole Limbaugh said he plans to turn every light on in his house, then encouraged his listeners to do the same. As someone said up thread, it'll always be a battle to get dickheads to conserve or change their energy thinking.