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Jesus, I’ve been quoting a 1 terawatt figure when arguing with people about how bad our interconnection queues are. It’s at 2.6?! That’s fucking brutal.
The market is rejecting fossil fuels. Solar is just way, way, way cheaper and wind is substantially comparable (wind at $32/MW-hour, compared to somewhere between $5-30/MW-hour for natural gas depending on the region) And in my opinion, wind still hasn’t really hit its learning curve. I expect it’s prices will have a plummet in my lifetime, as soon as places like northern Europe, New England, and the dust bowl states start seriously buying it.
If the grid operators were on their shit, we’d be shutting down natural gas plants in favor of renewables for purely economic reason, as already basically happened with coal for gas.
We aren’t even talking about having to add new transmission routes. A lot of the upgrades needed are just smart sensors so that we can run lines closer to their real capacity rather than keeping them at enormous factors of safety in fear of very rare events. A lot of the upgrades needed are just reconductoring, which is only a small fraction the price of new routes. If the utility monopolies aren’t stepping up to the plate, it’s time to get a new contract.
I really hope we can figure out how to fix that issue quickly, but I don’t really see that happening.
The Texas model seems pretty good, like I’m willing to pay more for renewables. I actually already have elected to do so; when my utility was looking to add another hydro generator, I paid for “extra blocks of power” which were $15/mth. I got 2 for 2 years, so my electric is cleaner now than otherwise, not cheaper but cleaner. It was opt-in, but I’d be happy to have it as just a standard cost of upgrading, as well.
We are all in this together, let’s act like it.
This problem is one about interconnection studies for new utility-scale wind and solar. Texas operates by letting them build, and then telling them they can’t sell electricity. That’s not great either.
Right move here is to do a planned build-out of transmission to support actual needs.
Right, what I mean is the Texas model of pre-surveying for places they would be a good fit with minor pushback, and then having the projects paid by everyone, rather than some investor who can just flake out.
Their grid is an absolute disaster, so I’m certainly not idolizing most of what they are doing, but the method they follow to get them at least done… that part is good.
hypothetically producing roughly twice the amount of power currently providing juice to the nation’s schools, hospitals, gaming rigs and Taco Bells
What a painfully useless comparison. Does this include additional AC load when patrons get the meat sweats and diarrhea?
Here’s a real article on the issue: https://emp.lbl.gov/news/grid-connection-backlog-grows-30-2023-dominated-requests-solar-wind-and-energy-storage
