The fastest growing job in Texas is wind turbine technician, data projects

[Rhiannon12866]

Renewable energy will provide the most job growth for Texans in the next few years, employment projections show.

Wind turbine service technicians will be in high demand from now until at least 2026, according to the government-funded Projections Managing Partnership that uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Between 2017 and 2019, the number of jobs to service wind turbines will increase 20.1 percent, the data shows. And by 2026, wind turbine service jobs will more than double.

Wind and solar energy projects are also expected to be the fastest growing source of new generation over the next two years, according to a previous report by the Energy Department. Wind is projected to grow 12 percent in 2019 and 14 percent in 2020.

Texas is the largest producer of wind energy in the U.S., generating about 18 percent of its electricity from wind, largely due to huge commercial-scale wind farms in West Texas. Texas has more than 20,000 megawatts of installed wind capacity, which could rise to 38,000 megawatts by 2030, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.


More: https://www.mrt.com/business/bizfeed/article/The-fastest-growing-job-in-Texas-is-wind-turbine-13601522.php

[akraven]

1. Very great. We have 3 up here! nt

[Dennis Donovan]

2. I flew my helicopter into one. Next thing I knew, I was walking out of the emergency room...

I'm Trevor, and I always seem to make it out of such things...

[Duppers]

3. That's good news.

And a counter to rethugs' position.

[hunter]

4. Each wind turbine represents a commitment to dirty "natural" gas...

... at least twice, and closer to three or four times the turbine's nameplate rated power, for the life of the turbine.

World gas "reserves" are large enough to end what's left of earth's natural environment as we know it. Natural gas extraction and distribution schemes are among the largest industrial projects of our time

A solar and wind powered utopia would look nothing like the high energy industrial society many affluent people now enjoy.

This news does not bring me joy.

It's greenwash for the filthy natural gas industry, in Texas, of course...

Fracked natural gas is hardly any better than coal.

You wanna save the world? Quit eating factory farm meat, abandon automobile and consumer culture, and promote birth control.

Wind and Solar are not going to magically displace fossil fuels.

The way our current society works, where "economic productivity" is a direct measure of the damage we our doing to our earth's natural environment and our own human spirit, solar and wind energy will never be more than supplements to fossil fuels.

The only way to quit fossil fuels is to quit them. It's like smoking. You are a smoker, or you are not. If 30% of the tobacco in your cigarette is replaced with pure cellulose fiber, and the pushers call those cigarettes "light" or some other silly marketing buzzword, it's still a cigarette, and it's still most likely to shorten your life.

Wind and solar power mean nothing if we're not willing to live in the kind of economy they could support.

[Finishline42]

5. Your view doesn't align with the facts

How many coal fired power plants have been shut down in the last 10 years? Why? Mainly because their cost to produce electricity exceeds the cost from wind and solar. Coal has become a stranded asset due not only to gas but also wind and solar.

Texas went from 1% of their electricity to over 17% from wind in about 10 years.

Iowa produces over 30% of their electricity from wind on the way to 50%.

Wind would be growing even faster if the Grain Belt Express wasn't stopped by one county in Missouri (not sure why they didn't go thru Iowa???). The reason why Texas wind has grown so fast is the construction of transmission lines starting in 2008 to get the power from where the wind was to population areas of Austin and Dallas.

The principle advantage of wind is that costs are coming down and the fact that they don't have to pay for fuel. With every windfarm brought online, the amount of time a gas plant is used goes down. They have fixed costs. When you reduce the time used, they have to spread those costs over fewer hours driving their cost of power they produce up. It's just a matter of time.

Another advantage of wind - when you double to diameter of the blades you cube the output. Making bigger windmills is an engineering and manufacturing problem that is solvable. It's why 20 and 30 years ago they were so much smaller.

Not sure what you mean by this >>> A solar and wind powered utopia would look nothing like the high energy industrial society many affluent people now enjoy.

[hunter]

6. And you are wrong.

Wind turbines don't generate their rated capacity when the wind is not blowing fast enough, which is most of the time. It doesn't matter how big they are, or how many there are.

Current battery storage schemes have a capacity measured in minutes. Wind outages last for days, even weeks.

The basic problem is the same with solar.

That's just the way it is.

Shutting down coal plants is desirable but hybrid gas-wind-solar systems are not going to save us.

In such systems gas will always be the primary energy source.

[Finishline42]

7. What silliness you spew

It doesn't matter what windmills don't do when the wind isn't blowing. It matters what they produce when it does. You don't become the biggest producer of wind energy in the US if what you say is true. 17% of the electricity produced in Texas total comes from wind - in just 10 years! Solar is on the rise as well.

Batteries are doing more than what you think. They are taking the place of power plants running at idle, boilers fired up just waiting to provide power IF needed.

Solar's problem is that there isn't an advantage for large scale production that wind has. But solar produces power mostly when the need is greatest - during high AC demand.

Have you noticed that utilities are adding wind and solar because of the demands of their large customers? Seems large companies want to be able to boast their sustainability.

[hunter]

8. Every wind and solar enthusiast inevitably becomes a shill for the natural gas industry.

In our high energy industrial economy their utopian energy schemes are simply not viable without wretched natural gas primary power inputs. The natural gas industry knows this, otherwise there would be no giant wind turbines in Texas.

"Better than coal" simply isn't good enough, and it's not even buying us time in a world where billions of people are transitioning from poverty to middle class consumers who buy things like air conditioners, refrigerators, and motor vehicles.

World carbon dioxide emissions are rising, fossil fuel use is increasing, and hybrid gas-wind-solar energy systems are not going to stop that.

The only way to quit smoking is to quit smoking.

The only way to quit fossil fuels is to quit fossil fuels.

There are many ways we might do that, but the Texas way isn't one of them.

Call me silly, but wind turbines don't make me feel optimistic about the future.

They are a physical manifestation of a fundamental flaw in the way we analyze human environmental impacts.

[Finishline42]

9. Actually it's complicated...

An economy based largely on fossil fuels for a country of 330 million can't just stop using fossil fuels. But we can, step by step reduce their use.

Wind and solar is a way to step towards that future.