Renewable tidbits

[aerohead]

*As of April,2019,Iowa was getting 37% of it's electric power from wind.
*As of same date,Oklahoma was getting 31.9%
*South Dakota,over 25%
*Kansas,10.6%
*As of 2017,Texas was getting 18% of it's power from wind/solar.
*As of 2014,US installed wind capacity was 14.67% of total demand.
*As of same time,wind constituted 4.4% of total US electrical demand.
*In 2015,US onshore wind was the cheapest form of electric power.

[oil pan 4]

Where did those cone from?

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Where did those cone from?

Most is from the USDOE Renewable Energy Laboratory website.The wind power $ value (1.5-cents/kWh) is from Ph.D.Michael Wysession's lecture series on The Science of Energy,2015,The Great Courses.
The 2017 Texas data is from my CoServ Electric Co-op Magazine,May 2019 issue.

[oil pan 4]

Well then forget solar.
Except when. You need extra reliable mid day power.
Or for home owners.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Well then forget solar.
Except when. You need extra reliable mid day power.
Or for home owners.

There are some concentrated solar power plants which can store enough heat in molten salts to provide load through the night.
And a market basket of other storage technologies already in service,or in the pipeline.

[oil pan 4]

The concentrated solar plants are a huge waste of money and they use natural gas.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

The concentrated solar plants are a huge waste of money and they use natural gas.

Renewable energy storage is a topic of much interest.
Having a thermal phase-change 'battery',for night time power production would be a contribution to that challenge,wouldn't it? Do you object to solar energy with a 100% capacity factor?
And if externalities and hidden costs are properly accounted for in present- day fossil-fuel-fired power-plant electric rates,do the economics of solar not take on a more favorable position?
We're talking about decarbonization after all.

[oil pan 4]

A thermal solar plant that burns natural gas isn't very carbon free.

Even if it ran 24 hours it still would be way below 100% capacity factor. The solar collector would have to be about 500% over sized or more, with a huge storage tank just to make name plate around the clock and would probably still need to burn some natural gas.
Probably be better off with wind power.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

A thermal solar plant that burns natural gas isn't very carbon free.

Even if it ran 24 hours it still would be way below 100% capacity factor. The solar collector would have to be about 500% over sized or more, with a huge storage tank just to make name plate around the clock and would probably still need to burn some natural gas.
Probably be better off with wind power.

I was limiting my comment to concentrated solar.The fracking/methane issue makes natural gas less appealing more and more.If the plant provides power 24-hours a day,at the plants rated capacity,on the days it can produce,that would be 100% capacity factor for those days.In the Atacama desert that might be 365-days/year.It's all about the design criteria,yes.
As part of a market basket of solutions it could play an important role.

[oil pan 4]

Fracking for natural gas has allowed it to become a cheap replacement for coal.
Don't like fracking then you must like coal.