Texas solar capacity increased more last year than any year *after* biden passed the IRA. More renewables came online in 2023 than any year in decades. I don't think people realize how epic the new subsidies are. You can have up to 70% of your project subsidized. Also Obama didn't have any subsidies for nuclear or geothermal which is the hottest thing right now. Biden just deregulated the geothermal industry which I'm sure libertarians will give him credit for @StupidMoniker . Geothermal is going be the big next thing and the government has billions lined up ready to turbo boost it. Texas is primed to be the renewable capital of the world
It's funny how the right scum think the guy falling asleep back to back days during a criminal trial is somehow fitter than biden lol. Biggest dipshits are boomers
By the time Biden took office, California already had 31 GW of solar capacity. I think they're at 45 now. But, as I alluded to earlier, federal policy is not the main driver in generation. If it was, you'd have seen more impact outside of California. State policy is more impactful than federal policy in this area and California really went after getting solar built, with a wholesale market that would accommodate solar, a grid that would interconnect them, utilities that would contract for them, customers willing to embrace them. And the economics was a strong driver because California is a very expensive electricity market, making the investment case to build zero-marginal-cost generation pretty easy. While I'd like to blame Abbott for every bad thing, and while maybe I've been co-opted by the industry, I think this isn't true at all. I'd say there are two main reasons we have a big wind fleet. The first is that we deregulated generation so that anyone can build and they can take their chances in our energy-only wholesale market. In other parts of the country, power plants can get paid for merely existing and being ready to produce, but in Texas they only get paid when they actually get dispatched and produce. Because wind has zero marginal cost, it is always dispatched whenever it runs (dispatch stack runs cheapest first). The investment case for fossil fuel generation has rarely been manifest in the last decade or two for this very reason -- they cost something to run, so they don't run as often or as profitably. So whenever investors have been looking at building generation in Texas, the investment case is always strongest for renewables. (The reason we don't see these wind fleets in neighboring Great Plains states is that they're old school vertically integrated regulated utilities. If they built wind farms, they would make part of their legacy fleet a "stranded cost" that ratepayers would still have to pay for without getting any benefit from. In Texas, its competitive firms that take that risk, not ratepayers, so there are no qualms about putting less efficient plants out of business.) The second reason is that FPL convinced regulators to build a major transmission line from West Texas to Dallas. Without good transmission, West Texas would have more generation than demand, and Dallas the inverse problem. By building the transmission (the cost of which fell onto all customers as ratebase), the wind fleet got access to a strong market without having to pay for it. And yeah, there were some investment tax credits that made wind investors more money, and maybe it pushed some marginal cases into the black, but mostly the ITC was just icing on the cake of a rational economic decision. However, that wind fleet is hurting our ability to maintain reliability, not supporting it. Wind has actually saved ERCOT a time or two because it was blowing hard when we needed it. But, it doesn't always blow and we can't turn it on whenever like we can with a gas turbine. But, the economics has been so good for wind, it's outcompeted gas for investment dollars and the amount of dispatchable generation in the stack has been dropping as a result, to the point that FERC is concerned it's a reliability problem. Had the investment case for wind been bad these last 20 years, we would have built many more gas turbines, which we can start and stop as needed. And sure, we might have still had the problems with freezing and with dependence on an unfeeling gas e&p industry that we had in Uri, but those issues are addressable. I know its not popular with my liberal friends, but we actually need more control over our dispatch unless or until we have so much in renewables that we can diversify the volatility away. We're not there yet. Maybe in 20 years we will have so many batteries we won't need gas anymore. But we need gas right now.
If California "really went at it" then why did they shut down the California Solar Incentive program in 2016? Why didn't they offer state solar credits to push for more solar? The current federal tax subsidies for solar is more than what CA ever offered to developers. You realize that you can get 70% of your cost subsidized right? Thanks for the post. Learned quite a bit. Good to see smart people on these forums
They've been very concerned about the duck belly phenomenon (that grid demand actually drops in the middle of the day because of so much rooftop solar) they created and the reliability problems that could follow. They have in recent years been beefing up their Resource Adequacy policies, which basically requires everyone who serves load to show that they have enough generation to actually serve it. Cali still wants a zero-carbon grid, but policymakers know that it's more complicated than just putting a solar panel on every horizontal surface. If they aren't careful, they could create a policy-induced crisis (they'd done it before in 2000).
But long duration batteries solve this problem which is what the LPO office has been focused on. Thats the only real solution long term. Deploying batteries alongside every solar installation. I have a friend who's a executive at a battery company who just got a big grant from the energy department specifically for this issue. We need to deploy massive batteries alongside solar so we can better manage loads. Batteries are the real solution to many of the issues we face today. Before the inflation reduction act was passed we literally didn't manufacture any long duration batteries. Now we're on quickly catching up with China when it comes to batteries
I'm very hopeful for batteries to help solve our problems here. But there's a long road to get to even the level of deployment that wind or solar has, nevermind its potential to put gas out of business. That's decades away. We just can't build them that fast. And the technology is still quickly evolving and who knows what the economic disruption will be. I'm excited about batteries and I think Biden's infra bills have been great for kicking off that and other energy 2.0 projects (like hydrogen). So, on topic, Biden's no joke. By the time the effects of the bills he signed into law are fully felt by voters, though, Biden will be out of office and dead. Props to him for focusing on what will serve the country for the next 50 years instead of what would get him re-elected in 4 years.
You should read the liftoff report from the LPO office. Battery deployment is obviously nowhere close to what's needed to replace gas but its years ahead of schedule. We have more battery plants under construction than literally anyone else right now. The LPO office is pumping an extra 70 billion in low interest loans on top of the subsidies to get them deployed as fast as possible. What's your view on green hydrogen? I'm not sure you saw but the treasury department released its tax guidelines on hydrogen and it has zero subsidies for the blue hydrogen sector. Are you bullish on geothermal? https://www.energy.gov/lpo/pathways-commercial-liftoff-reports
LOL.....this is from Argentina, typical maga trying to spin it to the US...................can't run on the truth, so ya gotta make up lies LOL
Subsidies are the only reason why TSMC decided to build its most advanced chips here in usa. If it wasn't for subsidies their CEO said they would build in japan instead. When China invades Taiwan in 2028 now we won't have to go to war anymore. Subsidies literally saved us from ww3
What do you expect from low iq donks @Space Ghost . All he does is post disinformation and conspiracies
Or maybe, deregulation is sometimes good and sometimes bad, and subsidies are sometimes good and sometimes bad.
