the sad thing about this data is how politicized clean energy has become.
the blue states have a lot of energy solar - while the red ones are sparse. the red ones get a lot of sun while the blue ones don't.
the blue states have a lot of energy solar - while the red ones are sparse. the red ones get a lot of sun while the blue ones don't.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-tops-us-states...
wind turbines are wonderful things to look at. but yeah some of those were constructed in the years there was a "blue" admin n I guess market forces took over too.
Saudi Arabia generates ~41% of its electricity from oil, 59% from natgas and <1% solar. Talk about mismanagement...
https://www.eia.gov/international/data/country/SAU/electrici...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler_Ridge_Wind_Farm
We also have a ton of solar. We could be doing much better as we also have an enormous amount of coal plants.
ERCOT has also had a number of spectacular -- and costly -- failures.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Reliability_Council_o...
Especially as you install more wind and solar, capturing (or sending) generation across a wider geographic area should regress-to-the-mean production and consumption better without turning on peaking plants that may be on for only hours a year. Or get natgas generation from areas where the natgas infra hasn't frozen solid.
https://www.ferc.gov/introductory-guide-electricity-markets-... ("ERCOT is not subject to federal (FERC) jurisdiction because its grid is not connected to those of other states. Thus, power sales in ERCOT are not considered sales in interstate commerce and not subject to federal (FERC) oversight. That said, ERCOT runs some electricity markets that have similarities to those described herein.")
Edit: This is only up until recently; Texas is seeking to potentially interconnect with neighboring grids, forgoing FERC independence in the process.
Texas Bill [H.B. 199] Opens ERCOT to Grid Interconnection - https://www.environmentenergyleader.com/stories/texas-bill-o... - July 25th, 2025 ("A completed interconnection—either synchronous or non-synchronous—would likely bring ERCOT under partial federal jurisdiction for the first time since its creation. Currently, ERCOT operates almost entirely within Texas to avoid triggering FERC oversight under the Federal Power Act.")
Connecting Past and Future: A History of Texas’ Isolated Power Grid - https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/connecting-past-and-... - December 1st, 2022
Why Texas Has Its Own Power Grid - https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-it... - August 18th, 2003
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection (see Ties section)
(Yes, they have to be HVDC or VFT).
Quebec operates like Texas does, for political reasons too, with ample export and import capacity (import/export capacity = 15/20% of peak consumption)
> [1] In the 1939 case United States v. Rock Royal Co-op, the Supreme Court had included milk processed and sold entirely within the state of New York within the federal government's purview because the company used a mixture of raw milk from farms within and outside the state of New York.
Like there's no way all of the energy in Texas only comes from Texas supplied materials.
I can't find the court case I want but there's another one about how somebody's local consumption had an effect on the interstate price so growing plants for local use can be federally regulated. And therefore, to me, FERC's existence effects the price of electricity on the rest of the states.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wrightwood_Da....
And still, we've seen a massive amount of green energy installed here. Both windmills and solar farms.
But when you look at a grid map you pretty quickly understand why that's the case.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-IPCO/live/fif...
Right now, about 6% of my power comes from natural gas. That's the only fossil fuel power I'm currently using. Everything else is solar/hydro/wind. Not sure why nuclear isn't listed, I thought we had an active plant here. But you get the picture.
For my grid, new solar or wind is simply not needed so why would we be anywhere near the top of installation? Batteries is what we actually need.
There is a point where it's a bad idea to install more renewables.
They have a plan to be 100% renewable by 2030 and I believe they'll actually hit that target given how close they already are.
The curious thing is that so many of these kinds of claims can be disproven in literally seconds to minutes in any debate, yet they persist.
Certain tendencies aside, republican and conservatives types aren't utter idiots and do know how sidestep some rally talk to serve their own benefit if they think it's practical, profitable and useful.
Not to mention that many conservatives love the field of off-grid prepping to this day and would certainly know about the value of solar, wind, hydro and any other robust renewable power technology. You're not going to build a coal plant or an oil refinery next to your deep-woods Utah cabin.
I'd imagine a lot of the lack of solar farms in the rural midwest and southwest is due to land use conflicts with ag and ranching. I don't have data to back that up though, just a hunch.
What money? Power bills won't go down. The solar panel factories aren't in that county. The installers will be brought in from out of state contractors.
Source: the butt tons of wind farms that sell their power to the state next door and the fact that our power bill has doubled in that time frame.
Not sure why they are whining. Sounds like job creation to me!
This is something I don’t really get. There’s always concern around change of course. But tending to renewables sounds so much nicer than fossil fuel issues. Like clearing snow off the panels doesn’t sound fun exactly, but it is outdoors… realistically for these giant fields of panels it should be a fairly mechanized process, so somewhat low impact… compare to black lung or, whatever, petrochemicals causing your tap water to catch fire.
If there's a foot of snow on the panels they don't catch any sun, don't get warm, and it doesn't melt off.
More than about 3 inches needs to be manually cleared.
Often exceeding the energy gained in the winter.
Oconto County averages between 4 and 5 feet of snow every winter. You need pretty heavy duty equipment to move that much snow out of a large field.
Most of Wisconsin doesn't actually get that much snow, though.
It just seems like a less unpleasant and less unhealthy job than pretty much anything related to petrochemicals, haha.
> 1/3 of corn is used for fuel - https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-detai...
> Corn raises temp & humidity - https://extension.illinois.edu/news-releases/corn-fields-add...
> Corn destroys farmland & requires very high fertilizer & pesticide inputs, plus extra fuel to to apply all those - ask any old farmer but this one has a lot of sources
Also solar farms can easily be hidden. They don't need to be next to a public road way and you can put trees around them. They're also great for dual use land with small animals &/or certain crops.
On the other hand, at the federal level Republican admins tend to cut renewable subsidies and that sort of thing.
Red states have a lot of open space and ought to be ideologically in favor is loose regulations; it would be kind of nice if Republican national politicians would fully embrace cronyism and identify renewable subsidies as an easy way to give money to their supporters. “Oh we did the environmental survey it turns out we should plop down a bunch of subsidized renewable installations in Red states.” Plenty of room for pork and might actually help the country as a side effect…
I think a lot of (honest) smart people would say that there are circumstances where even for those of us who love green energy (raises hand) subsidies aren't the most productive use of tax dollars. It can distort markets and can make the subsidized industry wasteful and uncompetitive, begetting reliance on the subsidy instead of pressuring them to compete.
Solar and wind in 2025 aren't some fragile, experimental things that would die without subsidies. At this point they ought to be able to compete normally, and they can. Given a high percentage of the government dollars spent today aren't even tax dollars, they're borrowed money, at now-increasing interest rates, for our grandchildren to deal with, I'd rather not subsidize businesses that can get by on their own now.
On flip side the orangutang cut green energy subsidies on grade A farmland, which most likely wasn't happening anyway.
Looking at, say, wind energy, the top 4 states are all red states. Their cumulative amount handily is more than the next so many states.
That's absolute energy. If you want to go by percentage of energy that is wind, it's the same - the top 4 are red states. In fact, 7 of the top 10 are:
https://www.chooseenergy.com/data-center/wind-generation-by-...
I haven't looked at solar, but it doesn't seem there's a clear divide.
Electricity in SF is now more than $0.50/kWh OFF peak.
It is certainly not a coincidence that CalISO has contracted with the most solar generators.
Notably, the municipal power companies mostly are far lower. It's PG&E and SoCal Edison who are that high, because they're shoving the costs of doing 75 years worth of deferred system maintenance all at once onto current ratepayers instead of their investors taking the hit. It's too bad that there wasn't a viable legal framework whereby the investor-owned utilties' shareholders could be wiped out as they deserved to be, and the utility infrastructure transferred to municipal ownership. Around PG&E's bankruptcy there were rumblings, but Sacramento couldn't figure out how to do it, so they propped them up and created a Wildfire Fund paid for by ratepayers to keep bailing them out.