alt Hacker NewsTexas 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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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.
This is a far from the truth as a I can imagine. There are still a large number of wind and solar projects in progress and I don’t believe the cadence has changed.
The reason here is it makes no sense for what they are trying to do. They want to power a DC, the sun sets and wind comes and goes. You would need overcapacity on both and then batteries. Probably something in there with not wanting to connect to the grid.
Wind and solar would require lots of land next to the DC to guarantee power.
Your statements are borderline lies. Texas gets a lot wrong but it is still building out lots of solar and wind but neither of those power and onsite DC very well.
Texas leads the nation in solar installed and solar planned.
How do you reconcile that with your theory?
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."
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?
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.