If you are pushing nuclear power by saying renewables are non-starters, Texas would like a word. 40% of our electricity is renewable.
It takes less than a year to build wind or solar farm.
It takes three to six YEARS for nuclear — and the power is more expensive. About triple. That’s insane!
The SPOF are also higher with nukes.
@feloneouscat So, I used to work on wind farms. Wind and solar are both limited by available land. This only works in Texas because we have lots of empty land of low value that has tendency of creating pressure differentials over surface features that are great for wind power. Basically, lots of hills and plateaus.
Wind turbines are also fairly loud. The blade tips are often moving in excess of 100mph. It's like living near a highway.
(cont)
@feloneouscat Nuke plants have a drastically smaller footprint and may be a better solution when discussing power for areas like Central Texas where land value and population density are much higher.
There's no one-size-fits-all solution. For many regions, renewables like wind and solar may not be the best fit.
Also worth mentioning, Texas wind farms partly exist because of a buttload of federal subsidies. Thanks Obama!
Which is funny because we are strongly thinking of installing solar. I crunched the numbers and we could easily run our house off of solar.
It’s not “one or the other” with renewables. For urban areas go solar.
Wind farms do not preclude farming on the land. And the US has a LOT of farmland. A single turbine lease pays out about $8,000. Farmers can make extra cash by leasing ag land with a turbine (and do).
It’s amazing the number of homes I see with solar on their roofs here in Texas. If Texas would offer more incentives we wouldn’t NEED more natural gas power plants (which will only exacerbate the problem with natural gas, not fix the issue).
Again, Republicans in this state are shortsighted only seeing fossil fuel as the main source of electricity generation.
We have TWO nukes in Texas. They are not popular.
@feloneouscat I acutally worked on a wind farm in Nebraska where the turbines were in corn and soybean fields 😂. Also, some in North Texas that were in cotton fields.
Exactly my point. And a nuke DOES preclude multi-use.
You could literally put a solar farm in the middle of a wind farm!
@feloneouscat @FreedomATX I considered leased solar last year but the salesperson was obnoxious and also didn't offer me enough of the rent they were trying to hoard during the 6 months electricity here spiked because of Ukraine. I told him what price per kWH I was willing to pay and he never counteroffered. I'm sure this year he's not asking for 27.5c.