All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?

[Meandering]

they need a no fly zone.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Nearly 130 birds were killed or injured during the test.

At least it wasn't an oil company that owned the solar panels. The CEO would be in jail.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Next Texas Energy Boom: Solar

Companies are spending $1 billion on new projects to harvest electricity from the sun

FORT STOCKTON, Texas—A new energy boom is taking shape in the oil fields of west Texas, but it’s not what you think. It’s solar.

Solar power has gotten so cheap to produce—and so competitively priced in the electricity market—that it is taking hold even in a state that, unlike California, doesn’t offer incentives to utilities to buy or build sun-powered generation.

Pecos County, about halfway between San Antonio and El Paso and on the southern edge of the prolific Permian Basin oil field, could soon host to several large solar-energy farms responsible for about $1 billion in investments, according to state tax records.

On a recent day, contractors for OCI Solar Power LLC erected posts for a solar farm that will be the size of more than 900 football fields. First Solar Inc. was negotiating to lease an adjacent property, its second project in the county. Last year, the Arizona company began capturing sunlight on 400,000 black solar panels in a separate project, converting the abundant sunlight into about 30 megawatts of power.

SunEdison Inc. has presented plans for its own utility-scale solar farm to county commissioners, and Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar Inc., is readying another site nearby for construction.

State incentives in California, Nevada and North Carolina helped fund the construction of many large-scale solar farms designed to sell electricity into those local power grids. But in Texas, while there is federal financial support for such projects, there are no state subsidies or mandates that encourage solar power.

Texas currently has only 193 megawatts of large-scale solar arrays, enough to power about 40,000 Texas homes on a summer afternoon. But the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the operator of the power grid that covers most of the state, expects between 10,000 megawatts and 12,500 megawatts of solar-generating capacity to be installed by 2029. That is roughly equal to the size of all solar farms currently operating in the U.S.

Texas’ growth will be driven by falling prices, said Warren Lasher, ERCOT’s director of system planning. By the end of the decade, he said, “Solar is going to become one of the most cost-effective sources of electricity on the grid.”

In 15 years, ERCOT predicts between 3% and 9% of its electricity generation will come from the sun, though that could be slowed by low natural gas prices, according to the grid operator and energy company officials.

West Texas “is flat, the land is open, available and cheap and there is a lot of sun” said Raiford Smith, vice president of corporate planning for CPS Energy, a city-owned utility in San Antonio. “It is an ideal place for putting solar.”

Another reason for the boom: Texas recently wrapped up construction of $6.9 billion worth of new transmission lines, many connecting West Texas to the state’s large cities. These massive power lines enabled Texas to become, by far, the largest U.S. wind producer.

Solar developers plan to move electricity on the same lines, taking advantage of a lull in wind generation during the heat of the day when solar output is at its highest.

In the afternoon, the average wholesale power price in the Texas grid’s western zone for the past year has been $35.43 a megawatt hour, according to data from the grid operator. Over the coming years, these wholesale prices are expected to rise, creating more opportunity for solar farms to be profitable. And in a heat wave, ERCOT rules allow wholesale prices to spike up to $9,000 a megawatt hour, creating the potential for large windfalls for solar farms and other power generators.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/next-texas-energy-boom-solar-1440149400

No state mandated green energy production and prices are uncapped to reap huge profits on time of day demand.

The state that has the cheapest energy will win the jobs race. The cost of doing business, especially energy intensive business, will move where the total cost of doing business is cheapest.

That puts California at a distinct disadvantage. Expect computer server farms to locate in Texas.

Data centers don't just suck down energy. They guzzle it. According to the National Resources Defense Council, data centers are one of the largest and fastest growing consumers of electricity in the United States. In 2013, U.S. data centers used 91 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, enough to power New York City households twice. The NRDC expects that demand to grow to 140 billion kilowatt-hours by 2020.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

I guess it finally dawned on Texas that wind mills don't work that well in a drought when the winds are light.

 

[Tim The Enchanter]

In the afternoon, the average wholesale power price in the Texas grid’s western zone for the past year has been $35.43 a megawatt hour, according to data from the grid operator. Over the coming years, these wholesale prices are expected to rise, creating more opportunity for solar farms to be profitable. And in a heat wave, ERCOT rules allow wholesale prices to spike up to $9,000 a megawatt hour, creating the potential for large windfalls for solar farms and other power generators.

No price gouging there.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

'Net metering' changes would destroy solar owners' investment

Dear Elected Official,

I am writing in regard to Senate Bill 438. My interests are self-preservation, ensuring Michigan is looking to and working toward a sustainable energy plan, and reversing the effects of global warming.

I have a 10 kilowatt net-metered Solar Panel System. I have invested my time, ingenuity, and money in establishing this system. It was not done with grants, handouts or contracts with public utilities (under the Experimental Advanced Renewable Program). I chose net metering as defined by PA 295 and entered into an interconnection and parallel operating agreement with Consumers Energy.

S.B. 438 is payola legislation to reverse the net-metering law and return domination to fossil fuel and the monopoly that the utilities so enjoyed. With the responsibility of changing the status quo comes the assured certainty of offending those who have worked so hard to preserve it. This Senate bill is a transparent attempt to eviscerate solar from the ownership of individuals such as myself.

Deniers of global warming are clueless, even with the evidence all around us such as drought, natural occurring weather turned into superstorms, glacial ice melting retreating at record pace.

I speak from experience with regard to Michigan being hostile toward solar. Senate Bill 438 turns that hostile environment to caustic.

EoM

People who trusted their elected officials are betrayed. Purity of heart and the environment don't go together.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Nevada Reaches Cap On Net Metering
August 21, 2015

Nevada has reached a statewide cap on net metering, which allows customers with solar panels at home to sell excess energy back to the utility company.

NV Energy indicated late Thursday that it had received enough applications from potential rooftop solar customers to add up to 235 megawatts, which was the limit negotiated this spring during the legislative session.

NV Energy is still accepting applications and will continue connecting personal solar installations into the grid, but people who apply now that the cap has been reached will be subject to interim rates that are expected to be adopted on Wednesday.

Rooftop solar companies say NV Energy’s proposed new rate structure will kill the industry in Nevada, and say they were misled about how quickly the state would reach the cap.

http://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/17825029-113/nevada-reaches-cap-on-net-metering-solar-fight

 

[Meandering]

Even if every house in this country had solar panels, it would not change global warming. The damage has been done, and we are not the "world".

I’ve discussed this at length before. (See: Linking Weather Extremes to Global Warming and Global Warming and Extreme Weather) The relationship is pretty simple, to know how it works all you have to do is remember one word:

AGWAAQRaRWaWW. Rhymes with “It’s stuck in my craw, paw!”
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2...linking-global-warming-to-bad-weather-events/

As far as being lied to, in 1977 Jimmy Carter said we would be out of oil, and oil reserves two decades ago. So what happened? Did we conserve enough to now have a glut? or was there some fibbing going on to push some other policy?
https://www.masterresource.org/carter-jimmy/jimmy-carter-energyspeech-april-1977/


.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Peer review is broken – Springer announces 64 papers retracted due to fake reviews

Science publishing giant Springer, with over 2900 journals, has announced on its website that 64 articles published in 10 of its journals are being retracted. Editorial staff found evidence of fake email addresses for peer reviewers.

London | Heidelberg, 18 August 2015

Springer confirms that 64 articles are being retracted from 10 Springer subscription journals, after editorial checks spotted fake email addresses, and subsequent internal investigations uncovered fabricated peer review reports. After a thorough investigation we have strong reason to believe that the peer review process on these 64 articles was compromised. We reported this to the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) immediately. Attempts to manipulate peer review have affected journals across a number of publishers as detailed by COPE in their December 2014 statement. Springer has made COPE aware of the findings of its own internal investigations and has followed COPE’s recommendations, as outlined in their statement, for dealing with this issue. Springer will continue to participate and do whatever we can to support COPE’s efforts in this matter.

The peer-review process is one of the cornerstones of quality, integrity and reproducibility in research, and we take our responsibilities as its guardians seriously. We are now reviewing our editorial processes across Springer to guard against this kind of manipulation of the peer review process in future.

In all of this, our primary concern is for the research community. A research paper is the result of funding investment, institutional commitment and months of work by the authors, and publishing outputs affect careers, funding applications and institutional reputations.

We have been in contact with the corresponding authors and institutions concerned, and will continue to work with them.

http://www.springer.com/gb/about-sp...ion-of-articles-from-springer-journals/735218

The money behind global warming research is dictated by the results. That leads to fabrication to support an agenda to get funding. Purity of heart and the environment don't go together.

 

[Meandering]

The money behind global warming research is dictated by the results. That leads to fabrication to support an agenda to get funding. Purity of heart and the environment don't go together.

Put this in perspective.

On January 3, 2014, EPA proposed revisions to the residential wood heater new source performance standards (NSPS) under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act. The draft revisions apply to new heaters ONLY and do not apply to existing wood stoves and other wood heaters installed in peoples’ homes. Go to www2.epa.gov/residential-wood-heaters to review and comment on the proposed revisions before final standards are issued. EPA will accept written comments for 90 days after publication of the proposal in the Federal Register.
http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/ordinances.html

Meanwhile
Jul 30, 2013
Washington wildfires burn combined 100 square miles

July 20, 2014
Washington and Oregon are currently under siege from 19 major wildfires across the two states,

August 16, 2015
Wildfires threaten homes in Idaho, Washington, California and Oregon, It includes the Old Greer, Kamiah Gulch, Lawyer 6 and Adams Grade fires, across a combined total of around 20,759 acres.

But you folks trying to heat your home for free are polluting the environment.

.