Google and Facebook blocking wind farm because it will raise their electric bill | Hacker News Reader

Google and Facebook blocking wind farm because it will raise their electric bill

latimes.com

32 pointsren_engineer27 comments

Wow they really bury the lede here. People are opposed to it because the wind farm is demanding an annual 11% return guaranteed to them. I would be opposed to that too if I operated or lived in Iowa.

I'm all for free market competition in energy production. The renewables should get zero subsidies. And nothing like net-metering should be allowed. Let the market select the cost optimal solution. At first we can apply amortized carbon tax over whole lifespan.

I'm ok with that as long as we stop subsidizing fossil fuels too.

The problem is that there is no such thing as a truly "Free" market, there are a lot of invisible hands tipping many scales.

Also, this sentence didn't make much sense to me:

"on a project it says will help in its efforts to trim carbon emissions by 75% compared to 2005 levels."

Why are we comparing to 2005 levels? Why not something more recent? That's extremely suspicious. Is that before we started moving a bunch of things over from coal to gas?

What are you even referring to when talking about "subsidizing fossil fuels"? Aren't they heavily taxed in the most of the world?

In the U.S., which is among the largest oil producer as of recent years, the fossil fuel industry is heavily subsidized.[1]

[1]https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trill...

I found this same link in just doing some research for my sibling reply, but they mentioned a lot of that $5.9tn is "implicit" (like not counting the health harms) – that feels a bit more iffy to me though.

I looked for some decent (non-partisan) sources on this [1] and was surprised that the number was so "small" in the US (given how large the industry is): $21bn. But about $290bn worldwide, down from $500bn in 2013. So they're on the downward trend which is promising.

Whenever we see the multi trillion dollar numbers, they are counting "implicit" subsidies to me feels a bit more vague. I'm not sure how this compares to renewable energy subsidies. But they work in increasing adoption. I'd be ok with having those sunset too once they reach ubiquity like fossil fuels.

[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-global-fossil-f...

This would be an acceptable solution if we had a carbon tax that fully internalizes the externalities created by pollution. Until then the market will always undervalue renewables.

We have been subsidizing the fossil fuel industry for decenia, so how would that be "free market competition"?

Renewables are getting massive amounts of subsidies, either directly on construction, or to buy out power for fixed price or grid operator are required to buy power from renewables first.

companies building green energy would never be greedy, this is slander from big oil. Warren Buffett is building this wind farm because he cares about climate change so much

Didn't some electric reliability council rate the midwest as potentially not being able to fully supply electricity during normal peak operation?

https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20...

Section MISO:

> Highlights

> Tighter than normal operating conditions are anticipated, particularly in the MISO North/Central region, which cleared too little capacity in the 2022–2023 PRA. The PRA capacity shortfall of 1,230 MW signals a potential for operating risk during peak summer conditions.

> Risk Scenario Summary

> Expected resources do not meet operating reserve requirements under normal peak-demand and outage scenarios. Above-normal summer peak load and outage conditions could result in the need to employ operating mitigations (i.e., demand response and transfers) and EEAs. Load shedding may be needed under extreme peak demand and outage scenarios studied.

In some very unlikely situations. And the Midwest is not a single grid.

A single grid doesn't mean you can move power anywhere in it. It's just as hard to move power the same distance from outside Texas through it as that same distance in the same grid. But the Midwest will be better off than Texas in the coming brownouts as it's better to be a little hot than freezing to death.

The crazy thing is Texas is also reasonably likely to have the same problems in the summer. ERCOT (the Texas grid) broke it's all time load record yesterday from the current heat wave. Thankfully it was windy, so everything held up.... this time.

I have friends who work for a regional power company and they've been warning about this, a ton of coal capacity was shutdown but the renewable energy hasn't replaced it. Said the cost to borrow energy to make up for shortfalls has gone from around $5 to around $240 and none of the power companies can guarantee they won't be forced to do rolling blackouts in some situations

other regions aren't much better off as we've seen in Texas and California

Warren Buffet is massively invested in Oil/Gas and Oil/Gas transportation to the Midwest. He doesn't want the power company (which he also owns) from building wind power unless he makes more money with wind power than he does from fossil fuels.

Warren is also heavily tied into the home building industry, he can also have a roll in preventing home builders and zoning rules from encouraging builders to build more efficient homes (bEcAuaSe of aFforDAbilTy) meaning we will continued to be tied to his energy monopoly for home energy. I wish people wake up and bring in the government to break up Berkshire Hathaway.

So, Warren Buffet should only support homes without considering affordabilility? The vast majority of customers would not be able to buy homes. Homes would only be available to those with unlimited amounts of money.

Insulation and air sealing of residential construction has barely increased in the past ~40 years. The technology to build higher efficient homes has been around since the 70s, and if done during initial construction would easily pay for themselves in very few years. If money was spent on this instead of other flashy eco technology (Solar Panels,High Efficient Heat Pumps, etc.) you could have C02 and cost savings for the life of the building with limited maintenance and no replacement cost.

That's pretty standard now for new home construction. Newly built homes are pretty tightly insulated as a standard.

Any discussion about wind power that does not discuss how electricity is generated when there is no wind is meaningless. Wind power alone won't power a data center, unless it can be turned off whenever there is no wind. And given the current prices for fossil fuels, I wonder how wind power can be so inefficiently used that it won't lower the electric bill, unless the data centers are already using electricity from other sources.

Well, if the wind farm is needed to meet targets emissions target, then there aren't many options, are there?

a) Iowa negotiates the annual guaranteed rate the private entity wants down; b) Iowa commissions another wind farm or an alternative from another entity, or builds it themselves; b) Iowa pays up and eats the cost; c) Iowa pays the rate it promised to the private entity by creating a new tax or by directly or indirectly pass down the cost to consumers (indirect being allowing whatever entities are involved to do so).

This is not really about "renewables", is it? It's the typical public-private partnership dilemma. When entering a PPP, a private entity will want all the profits and no risk. It's up to the state to evaluate whether that is a good deal or not, eg, because they really need it for the greater good of the public they serve and have no hope to get it done in any other way.

The article doesn't really explain how it would increase costs.

Probably the demand for a 11% annual return guarantee.

The wind farm operator wants an 11% annual return guaranteed to them by the states electrical operator. If the wind doesn’t blow then not only does the state have to buy external energy but they have to pay for wind turbines that aren’t spinning.

Makes sense.

Did you just make up a headline? Please don't do that.

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