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Texas House panel weighs anti-renewable energy bills

Somerville

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This does cause me to wonder how much money these Texas legislators receive from fossil fuel sources

Texas House panel weighs anti-renewable energy bills fueled by winter storm
The bills would tack big, grid-related costs on wind and solar power producers, who say that would chill, possibly halt, their rapid growth

Supporters say the legislation would improve the public’s safety after February’s winter storm, which caused at least 125 deaths and damage estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

After the crippling blackouts and water outages, some state Republicans, including Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott, placed blame for Texas’ grid failure on the unreliability of energy sources that depend on sunshine and wind and what they consider unfair market advantages given to the renewable energy industry through subsidies.
[. . .]

Mark Stover, director of government and regulatory affairs for Apex Clean Energy, which builds and owns wind and solar plants across the U.S., testified Thursday against HB 4502. He said the chilling effects of the legislation were already evident in the marketplace.

“This bill and a few others working their way around the Capitol right now have brought our business development activities to a grinding halt,” Stover said. “That’s bad for a pro-business state. We were in discussions on four wind and solar projects. … All of those conversations have come to a complete stop.”

Now, you want to talk about petty behaviour
Also Thursday, the full House briefly considered an amendment by Deer Park GOP Rep. Briscoe Cain to a workforce training bill. The bill would create a grant program to encourage veterans to be trained for jobs in the energy industry. Cain’s amendment would have removed wind and solar electric power from the definition of “energy industry.”
 
Democrats ranted that Texas lacks regulations and now rant when Texas creates regulations. LOL
 
This does cause me to wonder how much money these Texas legislators receive from fossil fuel sources



Now, you want to talk about petty behaviour
We actually do need to consider the higher overall cost of wind and solar power for the grid.
Consider that the unsteady nature of wind power, and the low duty cycle of solar power,
means that to have the grid rely on them, they must have backup power plants always ready to pick up their shortfalls.
Think of it this way, say a large computer center cannot loose power, so to account for the risk,
the center must have both a large UPS, as well as a motor generator, with fuel.
The UPS covers the 30 to 45 seconds for the motor generator to come up to speed.
Because the grid does not have the UPS, it must keep the backup power plant always up to speed, to take over,
and even without a load, it still uses fuel.
The reality is, that without grid scale energy storage, Wind and solar, are not consistent enough producers to be relied on
for a 100% duty cycle power grid. They can offset the load in some places, but without storage ,will always fall short for
having the lights go on every time you flip the switch.
 
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