Solar, wind account for 20 percent of power load in 10 states

[Rhiannon12866]

Electricity from solar panels and wind farms accounted for at least 20 percent of the total power load in 10 states last year, according to a new report by the Energy Information Administration.

The highest tally came in Iowa, where 37 percent of electricity came from wind and solar. Also listed were Kansas, Oklahoma, California, Minnesota, Vermont, Colorado, Maine, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Texas was not included in the report.

RELATED: Solar energy now mainstream power source

"During some months in 2017, wind accounted for more than 50 percent of in-state electricity generation in Iowa and Kansas, and solar accounted for more than 20 percent of in-state electricity generation in California," the report said.

Nationally, 8 percent of electricity generated last year came from wind and solar.


Short article, no more at link: https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Solar-wind-account-for-20-percent-of-power-load-13298910.php#photo-5875865


(More photps at link)

Some of the 300,000 computer-controlled mirrors, each about 7 feet high and 10 feet wide, reflect sunlight to boilers that sit on 459-foot towers. The sun's power is used to heat water in the boilers' tubes and make steam, which in turn drives turbines to create electricity in Primm, Nev. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, opened in 2014 after years of regulatory and legal tangles. Photo: Chris Carlson, ASSOCIATED PRESS

[NNadir]

1. Very misleading. The Ivanpah plant is an environmental disaster that largely depends on gas.

It has a terrible capacity utilization, can't meet it's projections and is in danger of losing contracts, despite frying birds in the air as they fly by.

It's a piece of garbage, a squander of billions of dollars.

By the way, 20% in 20% of the nation's states is a pretty miserable failure as of 2018. That means, except for nuclear energy, 80% of the electricity still comes from dangerous fossil fuels.

The so called "renewable energy" industry likes to utilize selective attention. You'll hear delusional crap like "on such and such a date, Portugal (or insert other principality) produced 100% of its electricity with "renewable energy." You won't hear about the times it produced zero percent, which happens regularly.

We hit 411 ppm in 2018 of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the atmosphere. When I was a child, we were around 300 ppm. I've been hearing these pathetic lies my whole damned life.

So called "renewable energy" didn't work; it isn't working and it won't work. We are simply making things worse by repeating endless hype about this lipstick on the gas and coal pig.

[pazzyanne]

2. Have a better day, NNadir.

You sound like you need one badly. Best wishes for a better tomorrow.

[Finishline42]

3. Oh look he's jumping up and down again

And every time he does another windmill comes on line. Is it causation or just a coincidence?

You pick one project and try to paint everything in that color.

Not sure why Texas wasn't included - last numbers I saw had them at 17% of their electricity coming from wind in 2017. They are adding solar, mainly panels not the solar plants that you are talking about. The principle thing is that they have built the transmission lines to get the electricity from where it's made to where it's needed.

You know I saw a bit on how the French nuclear plants are doing a very good job of filling the holes that wind and solar have in their output. How they were able to cycle up and down effectively to respond to the variability of renewables. Even though I am against nuclear because of the long term waste issue and the fact that mistakes happen and when they happen at nuclear plants the results have been catastrophic. But the fact remains, we are not going to build a fleet of nuclear power plants. The two plants in South Carolina were cancelled prior to completion and two in Georgia are close to doing the same. They take over 10 years from start to finish and they depend on growth in electricity demand which hasn't been happening.

20% is a failure? What was it 10 years ago? What will it be in another 10 years? The fact is that every time the grid pulls power from wind and solar the cost for nuclear, coal and even gas power plant go up which tip the scales to using more wind and solar. The more wind and solar that is installed, the cheaper they become to manufacture. Cost go down per kWh due to innovation and scale of economies. That's a reinforcement cycle I like.

[hunter]

5. The only good thing about the Ivanpah plant is that it may discourage future development...

... of similar blight.

Destroying fragile desert environments to "save" the environment is simply vile.

[NNadir]

8. It is very tenuous to argue at this point that the people applauding this monstrosity are...

...interested at all in saving the "environment." There is zero evidence that they are.

Were they, they would show some interest in the fact that we hit 411 ppm of carbon dioxide this year. In ten years, we'll be talking about the 430's and they'll still be prattling on about their grand self defined success.

In fact, they don't give a shit; have not even the most primitive understanding of ecology or even simple arithmetic, which is why, decade after decade after decade they carry on with their idiotic "percent talk."

They are so monumentally stupid that they confuse "environmentalism" with a parade of trucks tearing up the desert landscape to built metal towers - not to mention mountain tops for useless and rickety wind garbage.

It's not like it's going to stop soon; any more than similar delusions, only one example being Trumpism, are going to stop soon.

I'm an old man. My life will end soon enough. I have listened to this horseshit for decade after decade after decade; and plainly confess that when I was younger I actually bought into this sort of thing; I endorsed the experiment.

It's painful, very painful to see where this trajectory has gone.

Of course, the only difference between me and these benighted Trumpian freaks - Trumpian in the sense that they are completely oblivious to the fact that their grotesque failures are not great victories - is that I can read and I can think and I can respect data.

If I have a personal regret, it is the time I wasted engaging these dogmatic cultists on this website; but even though I've made excellent use of the "ignore" key here for the most stupid of them in recent times - I can at least say I did what I could do.

The best thing for me personally was to raise my two sons, one of whom I expect to be an excellent scientist and engineer. I regret that he and his highly intelligent brother will live in dire times that didn't have to be this way - had we respected magnificent human beings like Glen Seaborg and Enrico Fermi rather than vilify their most important contributions to technology - but I am happy, in some sense, that my son's engineering challenges will be grand, and well worth the investment of his soul.

I remind myself that were it not for the tragedy of human slavery and the most tragic war in US history, Abraham Lincoln might have lived his life as a good, but unremarkable, back country lawyer; US Grant, a clerk in a leather shop. Their generation faced and defeated the destruction of this country; my son's generation faces destruction of the entire world. I don't expect my son to be Lincolnian in his field of course - no one can expect that - but I do expect him to be a good fighter, a good soldier to use an over used metaphor, to save whatever is left to save from the rise of ignorance. If I have given anything to the world; it is a man who is clearly no ignoramus.

I came home from Europe this evening; and he's spending the weekend home from college and we had a most wonderful conversation about the latest discoveries in radiative heat transfer. It was a guilty walk through the sublime in what are rapidly becoming the worst of times.

It seems a small thing, but it's all I have done that is worthy of the great beauty into which I was born.

[flotsam]

4. Also ignored?

Geothermal, which is still in it's infancy in the states and hydro, which is one of the oldest and seems to be making a comeback...When your only tool is a glowing hammer....

[hunter]

6. The environmental impacts of hydro and geothermal are not negligible.

We ought to be removing dams, not building more.

[flotsam]

7. I agree

but I think there are useful ideas for micro-turbines in river runs and tidal generation. I'm not well versed in geo so I'm mostly unaware of environmental concerns. Mostly I don't like arguments claiming only nuclear is viable...