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Comment by lee_ars | Hacker News Reader

Texas specifically has heavily politicized and demonized wind power, in spite of having massive successes with it prior to 2016 and being a leading producer of it. Solar isn't as bad, but is still seen as "leftist." The political landscape in TX is vastly more friendly to natural gas.

In other words, they are using gas turbines because the politicians are stupid.

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They are using gas because it's more reliable during peak usage. Wind generation in Texas isn't optimal throughout the entire state and conditions aren't optimal all the time. They still use wind, but from a pure numbers perspective, gas infra already exists, the gas is there, and gas is more reliable, so wind isn't always the cheapest form of energy. There are also diminishing returns on just adding more wind turbines.

Gas is also incredibly cheap in Texas. Way, way cheaper than you would think. In some parts, it's negative price - you will be paid to use it. We have entirely too much gas, which is actually a problem because ideally we want to discourage its use.

So yes, wind and solar are cheap. Depending on where in Texas you are, gas is cheaper.

I think you might want to download new anti-Texas talking points. Texas is number two in the nation in solar power: https://seia.org/media/16020/texas.pdf/

Texas is not at all against renewables. Maybe, just maybe, whatever axes the people building data centers are optimizing on rule out solar/wind over factors other than "renewables are for leftists, so fuck that we're gonna burn gas even if it's more expensive."

15th for non-residential? Sounds like people overwhelmingly put it on their roofs, and politicians avoid it.

Did you miss the 1st utility part? It can be quite hard for nonresidential users to retrofit for solar. Not impossible but sometimes not an easy solve.

Sorry, I do have a bias.

> 11.40% of TX electricity is from solar

This is... Not a huge statement to me. My home state is at 16% solar, and we're calling it inadequate. [0] Its not a 1-to-1, as we have probably 10% of the people, and 1/3 of the landmass. More spread out, different demand, so a completely different landscape.

But 11% is not some victory dance.

[0] https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/about-energy/news/news-stories...

Not sure what point you have. I am not advocating Texas is the best in the world or doing a happy dance but you were quoting a specific number which was nonresidential which captures the various commercial and other nonresidential/utility generation. I would never expect those to be that high, it’s hard to retrofit some commercial roofs, might be a longer payoff and where there is density you don’t have ground space for panels.

I am glad Victoria is doing well. Texas could always do better but keep in mind what % you’re quoting that Texas has 7x the solar capacity that Victoria has. I suspect that will get even more aggressive has batteries have become more cost effective at utility scale.

Avoid it to the tune of being in the top third (for now, they're projected to keep growing), behind only blue states that are known for aggressive rollout and/or climates that are overall more favorable (i.e., Texas gets its fair share of sun but not quite like CA and NV, for example)? Is that your idea of avoiding it because politicians want to own the libs?

> I think you might want to download new anti-Texas talking points.

No need—the current ones are uploaded directly into my mailbox regularly by Randy Weber, my district rep.

Texas leads the nation in solar installed and solar planned.

How do you reconcile that with your theory?

*utility-scale solar, not solar overall

Utility scale, solar installs, and will be total solar by end of year.

Texas accounts for 40% of new solar capacity installed per year at this point.

It does lag behind an inefficient and expensive rooftop solar, and has no State mandate for homeowners to build it.

That said, I think this is enough to show that Texas doesn't hate solar, so there's probably a different reason for selecting gas to support the data center. If I were to Hazard I guess, it would be stability and demand curve

I often wonder why conservatives have such a problem with renewable energy.

I can certainly believe that oil and gas pay better bribes, and that this incentivises a certain kind of politician who seem to be over-represented among conservatives in the US. But that doesn't explain the widespread dislike among the conservative end of the general population. Is it just groupthink or Overton Window -nudging using social media? Or is there something more psychological going on? Some kind of disgust reaction?

One would think that self-proclaimed "conservatives" would like to conserve the natural world... Long gone are the days of Teddy Roosevelt that's for sure.

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