Say what??
You should read the article. Click on the link and put on your glasses. No where in this article does it say that they are selling solar modules for $1 a watt. In fact, the article notes that Nanosolar is hopeful of starting production this year! With all the hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into this outfit, the price tag is going to be a lot more than a dollar, or a lot of investors are going to lose one hell of a lot of money.
Again, tell me the name of the person in Nanosolar who I am to call who will sell me solar modules, with standard industry warranties for $1 a watt. I will by one million watts of modules immediately with delivery in the next 60 days.
The part of the article that relates to $1 a watt is a speculative comment from Martin Roscheisen, the CEO of Nanosolar. He is merely stating the performance level, as he sees it, that will determine "which technologies win the deal." Here is the quote from the link you provided:
Q). In the thin film industry there are several players like Miasole or SoloPower that are looking to build the next CIGS thin film technology. What will make the difference in which technologies win the deals?
A).An IEC-certified panel product available in near-term 100MW volume at a fully-loaded cost point in the sixties [cents/Watt] or less so that one can profitably sell at a $.99/Watt wholesale price point. There's no chance a process technology based on a high-vacuum deposition technique is going to make this. The window of opportunity for that more conventional approach to CIGS existed perhaps two years ago in the form of the chance of getting to market earlier with such more incremental technology.
A significant problem with the Nanosolar product is that they plan to make thin film solar cells. These things deteriorate in output much faster than the single crystalline cells. I always buy only single crystalline cells, they are worth the extra money. They give better output during cloudy conditions, and already noted do not degrade in output as fast. The technical data that I provide is for the single crystal cells, if you use other types apply appropriate additional derate factors.
Please get serious about the energy issue. In 2006, the average installed cost of solar modules was $8.58 per watt in Northern California, which is about the same as the average across the country. This is $8,580 per installed KW peak generation with a 20% capacity factor. On the same capital basis as a nuclear power plant, this is $34,320 per KW. Due to various factors, these "Greenie Propaganda KWs" are not the same as real world KWs as used by engineers and scientists.
It takes steel and aluminum and concrete and wires and meters and inverters to install the system. To attempt to get the outputs advertised, you need to track the sun, so you need mechanisms that move the panels in both azimuth and elevation. Without a tracking mechanism, you can get full power only around solar noon, assuming that your elevation is adjusted to be perpendicular to the solar incidence.
In addition, a solar module will never produce their rated KW. Rated KW can be reached only with the sun directly overhead, in the tropics, with the solar cell junctions maintained at 77 degrees F (25 degrees C) by a refrigeration plant! Solar output degrades substantially with increasing temperature. The junction temperatures rise is more than 20 degrees C, and I think that 30 degrees is often used, particularly if it is on a roof and ventillation is not the best. In the summer time when you need it the most, the output goes way down due to the high junction temperatures. A 30 degree C temperature rise results in a 15% decrease in output.
A very expensive nuclear plant costs $3,000 per installed KW. On an apples to apples comparison, a solar plant with equivalent KWH per year production capacity costs about $40,000 per installed KW, and even more if you live somewhere other than Arizona where a cloud or two visits every now and then. Do the math.
The solar plant, of course, n
Unfortunately, the wacko left will not like fusion any better than fission. It will be the same old story only in a different ball park.
Also, even assuming a fission plant generating net electricity is demonstrated in 50 years, due to the nature of the technology, it is likely to take a minimum of another 25 years after that to develop a commercial scale plant with economical power.
Fission will have a very long lifetime unless there is some incredible unanticipated technology breakthrough.
The only country meeting Kyoto is France because 80% of France's electric production comes from nuclear power plants. France is the world's largest exporter of electricity. Why is that? It is because their neighbors are nuclear poor and they want the less expensive French electricity. France is currently considering additional nuclear power plants solely for exporting electricity and working wonders for their balance of payments.
Nanosolar has little in the way of product, and certainly not at $1 a watt. They just recently received a $100 million round of funding to take there stuff into "volume production," whenever that might happen. Here is what Nanosolar says today on their website, and this is an exaggeration:
"While solar electricity has become less expensive in recent years, its cost remains approximately three times too expensive relative to grid power today. What technology would it take to break through the baseline defined by grid electricity and ultimately make solar electricity profitable?"
I bought my first solar cells in 1962, which you will observe was 45 years ago. The hype at that time was about the same as it is today, except that tax boondoggles did not exist. I installed my most recent solar project last year, a livestock watering system that went into production in September 2007.
I have done the best I can at making power from solar photovoltaics (PV), and if you can do it for less than $0.60 a KwH on a real world basis where it is used without any storage system, I am eager to learn from you. If you are an armchair greenie who never gets his hands dirty in the cause of energy and environmental protection, please stop wasting everyone's time with dribble.
Please publish the name and telephone number of where I can get PV for $1 a watt. I can become an overnight millionaire by buying the product and reselling for $4+ per watt. I called Nanosolar and they told me to drop dead and stop wasting their time, there was no way they could sell me product for $1 a watt. I referred them to your information, and they told me "the man is confused, no one can deliver for that price."
Also, the installation costs of solar panels is large per installed watt. Labor and materials are not cheap.
You can go to www.wholesalesolar.com to see for yourself how much it costs to buy PV products. Call Mark Coleman, the owner, and he will be happy to explain the economics.
* The Federal Government currently provides a 1.9 cents/kWH produced tax CREDIT for wind turbine operations, which is not small. There are additional state incentives, particularly in California.
* At what environmental cost? Citing the slaughter of thousands of birds each year at the Altamont Pass, California wind farm, the San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed a lawsuit in the Alameda County Superior Court November 1 seeking to halt or significantly reduce the number of annual bird deaths. According to the suit, more than 5,000 giant wind turbines at Altamont Pass kill roughly 1,000 golden eagles, hawks, owls, and other raptors, some of which are endangered, every year. An even greater number of non-predatory birds and bats are also killed there each year.
* Your numbers on liability insurance are pure fiction derived, no doubt from the fantasy web sites of the wacko left where you need a microscope to discover a truth or a fact. The nuclear industry pays for its own liability insurance and there is a gigantic fund built up over the years. If that is not enough, all nuclear plants collectively remain on the hook to pick up the tab. Read up on Price-Anderson, there is no government money involved. If repealing Price-Anderson will make you happy, let's do it. It is meaningless, it's value to help start an industry long ago when there was lots of uncertainty is long gone. Not needed.
* I didn't say that nuclear power is inexpensive, that is a relative comparison. What is the case, is that the average cost of electricity from nuclear power plants is much less than so-called alternative power. That'
If true, it would be terrific.
The part of Texas with the people is relatively flat with lots of water. The part with the mountains is dry. Pumped storage works when you have lots of water and mountains.
The Greenies have a tizzy fit any time anyone wants to build a dam. Dams are expensive and gigantic transmission lines are expensive. Check out California.
Other energy sources are not less expensive, except for coal and then by a rather small margin.
A long time to come on line is not necessarily a negative. For example, it takes forever to put in a pumped storage facility of any size. If a long time is your criterion, then forget pumped storage.
It is interesting that Greenies will lie down in front of bulldozers to stop dams, protect rivers and save fragile desert habitats, except when Greenie power is involved. Throw in a windmill or a solar collector, and any river is fair game to be despoiled and any desert can be completely covered up and its habitat destroyed, no problem.
Last year, the production costs for power at the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company (two big 1250 MW electrical reactor plants) were less than 1.4 cents per KwH. Add in the 1 cent per KwH amortized capital cost (25 year depreciation schedule) and you get less than 2.5 cents per KwH total bus bar cost. And these South Texas plant were two of the more expensive units built. They went into operation in the early 1990's, so it won't be all that long from now before they are fully depreciated (for tax purposes) and the bus bar cost will be only the 1.4 cents
There is no commercial wind plant ever built that has ever come close to this production cost level.
A great error is assuming that your pet power of the month will forever decline in price. Not so. There is a floor to what it costs to build, commission and maintain a windmill. Those hoping for free power had better plan to live a long time, and even then they will never see it. Wind power capital costs are not currently getting cheaper. It bottomed out and the price is up from a year or two ago.
WIND IS NOT THE CHEAPEST SOURCE OF POWER IN TEXAS AND NEVER HAS BEEN. Coal and nuclear are substantially cheaper. Perhaps one day for the price of wind power, and I would like to see it happen. We need all the cheap power we can get.
Austin Energy is the "socialist" power company run by the City of Austin. The City of Austin has not bought any wind turbines because to do so would be uneconomical and raise consumer prices. What they do is negotiate with private companies to build windmills and buy the power from them. The private companies, unlike the City of Ausin, can get Federal Subsidies to make the wind power appear to be near the level of conventional power sources in cost. Thus, the power is subsidized.
Wind is good, but for God's sake its promoters have to learn something about science and engineering. Greenie promoters do not have to lie, cheat and steal to get their technologies going. All things have their time and place, but don't take money from working people and college educations away from their children and give it to Yuppies chasing after their greenie passion du jour.
Concerning nuclear construction costs, they can be dramatically reduced, and it will happen one of these days. The Dresden 2 and 3 plants went into operation in 1970 and 1971, are still in operation today, and cost less than $150 per KW to build, approximately 25% more than a coal fired plant of that era. Naturally, there has been inflation in the meantime, but it is obvious that nuclear plants can be built for a lot less as sanity begins to return to energy production. In particular, standard plant designs to stop the huge custom engineering cost for each plant and factory built modules for assembly instead of using expensive onsite craft labor.
Remember that a nuclear power plant produces power day and night, when human beings need the energy. Power like this is more valuable than intermittent sources. Wind, solar and nuclear cannot be compared directly because they do not produce power on the same schedule. Nuclear is 24 hours a day whereas wind and solar are generation sources of convenience, you get the power when Nature decides to give it to you, not when you want it or need it.
Nuclear plants currently generate approximately 20% of our electricity, not 10%.
In places like Chicago and New Jersey, 50% of the electrical power comes from nuclear plants.
The energy production is much higher than 10 times the production from wind.
Fortunately, almost all of the currently operating nuclear plants will continue to operate well past their 40 year initial licenses. There are no technical reasons preventing them from going 60 years. Some of the plant designs will make 80 years, unless some more economical technology comes along to replace them.
You are correct that the sea level will rise 5 meters, but not in the time frame you are looking at.
The earth is still in the ice age, an infrequent and rare period. Average sea levels over the history of the earth are substantially higher than present.
Normal earth conditions are warm with no glaciers, and with most of Texas a large shallow sea. It will definitely happen again, unless man learns how to control the Sun and all other parameters that determine temperatures on earth.
* First off, the South Texas reactors will have at least a 60 year life. That is the design life. The current generation of U.S. reactors have a design life of 40 years and almost all of them are either now licensed for 60 years or will be when the time comes. With the additional focus on longevity, in truth the new plants for South Texas will be capable of at least 80 years with proper maintennce.
* What's this 5 meter sea rise propaganda??? Maybe where you live but it won't happen here in Texas over the next 100 years, especially if lots of nuclear and wind plants are built.
By the way, the reactors use water from the Colorado River at the present time, which is an inland source. There is a huge 7,000 acre cooling pond that gets its makeup water from the river and rainfall.
* Wind is terrific. The problems are the cost and when the wind blows.
* The wind capital cost quoted is after tax breaks. Also, the average wind turbine has a capacity factor of 30% in a good year (i.e., no long forced or maintenance outages). The average nuclear power plant in the United States each year over the past 5 or more years has operated with an average capacity factor of 90%, which includes forced and maintenance outage time. Consequently, the equivalent wind capital cost based on the price quoted is $3.90 per watt.
* To deliver power when the wind does not blow would require extraordinarily expensive energy storage devices. The alternative is double investment in backup power sources for when the wind does not blow.
* Wind power is not near the load centers in Texas. The wind is in West Texas and the people are in East Texas. It costs $1 million a mile for a major long distance transmission line.
* The cost of the wind turbines plus the cost of the additional long distance transmission lines plus the cost of backup power plants => We are way above $5 a watt and climbing and we still have major carbon emissions when the backup power plants have to operate.
* In addition, the wind tends to blow in the Spring and Fall in Texas. When are the energy peaks??? => In the summer and winter, of course! So, during peak periods, those backup generators are puffing along spewing out CO2 and other stuff that Greenpeace does not like. If wind power is going to "easily meet anticipated demand" someone had better figure out how to make the wind blow in the summer and the winter and other times when it is needed and how to reduce its variablility.
* Wind is terrific, but it is not cheap. The economics make nuclear power look like one hell of a bargain in comparison, even a nuclear plant with bloated costs due to regulatory delays and disruptive protesters.
Concerning South Texas and nuclear power, it is a wonderful location for new nuclear generation. It is half way between San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Houston. Austin is not too far away either. The generating capacity is in the middle of the area that needs it. The transmission infrastructure is already largely in place.
South Texas already has two nuclear unit in operation, so there is an experienced workforce and infrastructure in place. The local population is strongly in favor of nuclear energy and dislikes coal. It would be hard to find a better place for a nuclear plant.
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Say what?? You should read the article. Click on the link and put on your glasses. No where in this article does it say that they are selling solar modules for $1 a watt. In fact, the article notes that Nanosolar is hopeful of starting production this year! With all the hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into this outfit, the price tag is going to be a lot more than a dollar, or a lot of investors are going to lose one hell of a lot of money. Again, tell me the name of the person in Nanosolar who I am to call who will sell me solar modules, with standard industry warranties for $1 a watt. I will by one million watts of modules immediately with delivery in the next 60 days. The part of the article that relates to $1 a watt is a speculative comment from Martin Roscheisen, the CEO of Nanosolar. He is merely stating the performance level, as he sees it, that will determine "which technologies win the deal." Here is the quote from the link you provided: Q). In the thin film industry there are several players like Miasole or SoloPower that are looking to build the next CIGS thin film technology. What will make the difference in which technologies win the deals? A).An IEC-certified panel product available in near-term 100MW volume at a fully-loaded cost point in the sixties [cents/Watt] or less so that one can profitably sell at a $.99/Watt wholesale price point. There's no chance a process technology based on a high-vacuum deposition technique is going to make this. The window of opportunity for that more conventional approach to CIGS existed perhaps two years ago in the form of the chance of getting to market earlier with such more incremental technology. A significant problem with the Nanosolar product is that they plan to make thin film solar cells. These things deteriorate in output much faster than the single crystalline cells. I always buy only single crystalline cells, they are worth the extra money. They give better output during cloudy conditions, and already noted do not degrade in output as fast. The technical data that I provide is for the single crystal cells, if you use other types apply appropriate additional derate factors. Please get serious about the energy issue. In 2006, the average installed cost of solar modules was $8.58 per watt in Northern California, which is about the same as the average across the country. This is $8,580 per installed KW peak generation with a 20% capacity factor. On the same capital basis as a nuclear power plant, this is $34,320 per KW. Due to various factors, these "Greenie Propaganda KWs" are not the same as real world KWs as used by engineers and scientists. It takes steel and aluminum and concrete and wires and meters and inverters to install the system. To attempt to get the outputs advertised, you need to track the sun, so you need mechanisms that move the panels in both azimuth and elevation. Without a tracking mechanism, you can get full power only around solar noon, assuming that your elevation is adjusted to be perpendicular to the solar incidence. In addition, a solar module will never produce their rated KW. Rated KW can be reached only with the sun directly overhead, in the tropics, with the solar cell junctions maintained at 77 degrees F (25 degrees C) by a refrigeration plant! Solar output degrades substantially with increasing temperature. The junction temperatures rise is more than 20 degrees C, and I think that 30 degrees is often used, particularly if it is on a roof and ventillation is not the best. In the summer time when you need it the most, the output goes way down due to the high junction temperatures. A 30 degree C temperature rise results in a 15% decrease in output. A very expensive nuclear plant costs $3,000 per installed KW. On an apples to apples comparison, a solar plant with equivalent KWH per year production capacity costs about $40,000 per installed KW, and even more if you live somewhere other than Arizona where a cloud or two visits every now and then. Do the math. The solar plant, of course, n
Unfortunately, the wacko left will not like fusion any better than fission. It will be the same old story only in a different ball park. Also, even assuming a fission plant generating net electricity is demonstrated in 50 years, due to the nature of the technology, it is likely to take a minimum of another 25 years after that to develop a commercial scale plant with economical power. Fission will have a very long lifetime unless there is some incredible unanticipated technology breakthrough.
The only country meeting Kyoto is France because 80% of France's electric production comes from nuclear power plants. France is the world's largest exporter of electricity. Why is that? It is because their neighbors are nuclear poor and they want the less expensive French electricity. France is currently considering additional nuclear power plants solely for exporting electricity and working wonders for their balance of payments. Nanosolar has little in the way of product, and certainly not at $1 a watt. They just recently received a $100 million round of funding to take there stuff into "volume production," whenever that might happen. Here is what Nanosolar says today on their website, and this is an exaggeration: "While solar electricity has become less expensive in recent years, its cost remains approximately three times too expensive relative to grid power today. What technology would it take to break through the baseline defined by grid electricity and ultimately make solar electricity profitable?" I bought my first solar cells in 1962, which you will observe was 45 years ago. The hype at that time was about the same as it is today, except that tax boondoggles did not exist. I installed my most recent solar project last year, a livestock watering system that went into production in September 2007. I have done the best I can at making power from solar photovoltaics (PV), and if you can do it for less than $0.60 a KwH on a real world basis where it is used without any storage system, I am eager to learn from you. If you are an armchair greenie who never gets his hands dirty in the cause of energy and environmental protection, please stop wasting everyone's time with dribble. Please publish the name and telephone number of where I can get PV for $1 a watt. I can become an overnight millionaire by buying the product and reselling for $4+ per watt. I called Nanosolar and they told me to drop dead and stop wasting their time, there was no way they could sell me product for $1 a watt. I referred them to your information, and they told me "the man is confused, no one can deliver for that price." Also, the installation costs of solar panels is large per installed watt. Labor and materials are not cheap. You can go to www.wholesalesolar.com to see for yourself how much it costs to buy PV products. Call Mark Coleman, the owner, and he will be happy to explain the economics. * The Federal Government currently provides a 1.9 cents/kWH produced tax CREDIT for wind turbine operations, which is not small. There are additional state incentives, particularly in California. * At what environmental cost? Citing the slaughter of thousands of birds each year at the Altamont Pass, California wind farm, the San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed a lawsuit in the Alameda County Superior Court November 1 seeking to halt or significantly reduce the number of annual bird deaths. According to the suit, more than 5,000 giant wind turbines at Altamont Pass kill roughly 1,000 golden eagles, hawks, owls, and other raptors, some of which are endangered, every year. An even greater number of non-predatory birds and bats are also killed there each year. * Your numbers on liability insurance are pure fiction derived, no doubt from the fantasy web sites of the wacko left where you need a microscope to discover a truth or a fact. The nuclear industry pays for its own liability insurance and there is a gigantic fund built up over the years. If that is not enough, all nuclear plants collectively remain on the hook to pick up the tab. Read up on Price-Anderson, there is no government money involved. If repealing Price-Anderson will make you happy, let's do it. It is meaningless, it's value to help start an industry long ago when there was lots of uncertainty is long gone. Not needed. * I didn't say that nuclear power is inexpensive, that is a relative comparison. What is the case, is that the average cost of electricity from nuclear power plants is much less than so-called alternative power. That'
If true, it would be terrific. The part of Texas with the people is relatively flat with lots of water. The part with the mountains is dry. Pumped storage works when you have lots of water and mountains. The Greenies have a tizzy fit any time anyone wants to build a dam. Dams are expensive and gigantic transmission lines are expensive. Check out California. Other energy sources are not less expensive, except for coal and then by a rather small margin. A long time to come on line is not necessarily a negative. For example, it takes forever to put in a pumped storage facility of any size. If a long time is your criterion, then forget pumped storage. It is interesting that Greenies will lie down in front of bulldozers to stop dams, protect rivers and save fragile desert habitats, except when Greenie power is involved. Throw in a windmill or a solar collector, and any river is fair game to be despoiled and any desert can be completely covered up and its habitat destroyed, no problem.
Last year, the production costs for power at the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company (two big 1250 MW electrical reactor plants) were less than 1.4 cents per KwH. Add in the 1 cent per KwH amortized capital cost (25 year depreciation schedule) and you get less than 2.5 cents per KwH total bus bar cost. And these South Texas plant were two of the more expensive units built. They went into operation in the early 1990's, so it won't be all that long from now before they are fully depreciated (for tax purposes) and the bus bar cost will be only the 1.4 cents There is no commercial wind plant ever built that has ever come close to this production cost level. A great error is assuming that your pet power of the month will forever decline in price. Not so. There is a floor to what it costs to build, commission and maintain a windmill. Those hoping for free power had better plan to live a long time, and even then they will never see it. Wind power capital costs are not currently getting cheaper. It bottomed out and the price is up from a year or two ago. WIND IS NOT THE CHEAPEST SOURCE OF POWER IN TEXAS AND NEVER HAS BEEN. Coal and nuclear are substantially cheaper. Perhaps one day for the price of wind power, and I would like to see it happen. We need all the cheap power we can get. Austin Energy is the "socialist" power company run by the City of Austin. The City of Austin has not bought any wind turbines because to do so would be uneconomical and raise consumer prices. What they do is negotiate with private companies to build windmills and buy the power from them. The private companies, unlike the City of Ausin, can get Federal Subsidies to make the wind power appear to be near the level of conventional power sources in cost. Thus, the power is subsidized. Wind is good, but for God's sake its promoters have to learn something about science and engineering. Greenie promoters do not have to lie, cheat and steal to get their technologies going. All things have their time and place, but don't take money from working people and college educations away from their children and give it to Yuppies chasing after their greenie passion du jour. Concerning nuclear construction costs, they can be dramatically reduced, and it will happen one of these days. The Dresden 2 and 3 plants went into operation in 1970 and 1971, are still in operation today, and cost less than $150 per KW to build, approximately 25% more than a coal fired plant of that era. Naturally, there has been inflation in the meantime, but it is obvious that nuclear plants can be built for a lot less as sanity begins to return to energy production. In particular, standard plant designs to stop the huge custom engineering cost for each plant and factory built modules for assembly instead of using expensive onsite craft labor. Remember that a nuclear power plant produces power day and night, when human beings need the energy. Power like this is more valuable than intermittent sources. Wind, solar and nuclear cannot be compared directly because they do not produce power on the same schedule. Nuclear is 24 hours a day whereas wind and solar are generation sources of convenience, you get the power when Nature decides to give it to you, not when you want it or need it.
Nuclear plants currently generate approximately 20% of our electricity, not 10%. In places like Chicago and New Jersey, 50% of the electrical power comes from nuclear plants. The energy production is much higher than 10 times the production from wind. Fortunately, almost all of the currently operating nuclear plants will continue to operate well past their 40 year initial licenses. There are no technical reasons preventing them from going 60 years. Some of the plant designs will make 80 years, unless some more economical technology comes along to replace them.
You are correct that the sea level will rise 5 meters, but not in the time frame you are looking at. The earth is still in the ice age, an infrequent and rare period. Average sea levels over the history of the earth are substantially higher than present. Normal earth conditions are warm with no glaciers, and with most of Texas a large shallow sea. It will definitely happen again, unless man learns how to control the Sun and all other parameters that determine temperatures on earth.
Say what???
* First off, the South Texas reactors will have at least a 60 year life. That is the design life. The current generation of U.S. reactors have a design life of 40 years and almost all of them are either now licensed for 60 years or will be when the time comes. With the additional focus on longevity, in truth the new plants for South Texas will be capable of at least 80 years with proper maintennce.
* What's this 5 meter sea rise propaganda??? Maybe where you live but it won't happen here in Texas over the next 100 years, especially if lots of nuclear and wind plants are built.
By the way, the reactors use water from the Colorado River at the present time, which is an inland source. There is a huge 7,000 acre cooling pond that gets its makeup water from the river and rainfall.
* Wind is terrific. The problems are the cost and when the wind blows.
* The wind capital cost quoted is after tax breaks. Also, the average wind turbine has a capacity factor of 30% in a good year (i.e., no long forced or maintenance outages). The average nuclear power plant in the United States each year over the past 5 or more years has operated with an average capacity factor of 90%, which includes forced and maintenance outage time. Consequently, the equivalent wind capital cost based on the price quoted is $3.90 per watt.
* To deliver power when the wind does not blow would require extraordinarily expensive energy storage devices. The alternative is double investment in backup power sources for when the wind does not blow.
* Wind power is not near the load centers in Texas. The wind is in West Texas and the people are in East Texas. It costs $1 million a mile for a major long distance transmission line.
* The cost of the wind turbines plus the cost of the additional long distance transmission lines plus the cost of backup power plants => We are way above $5 a watt and climbing and we still have major carbon emissions when the backup power plants have to operate.
* In addition, the wind tends to blow in the Spring and Fall in Texas. When are the energy peaks??? => In the summer and winter, of course! So, during peak periods, those backup generators are puffing along spewing out CO2 and other stuff that Greenpeace does not like. If wind power is going to "easily meet anticipated demand" someone had better figure out how to make the wind blow in the summer and the winter and other times when it is needed and how to reduce its variablility.
* Wind is terrific, but it is not cheap. The economics make nuclear power look like one hell of a bargain in comparison, even a nuclear plant with bloated costs due to regulatory delays and disruptive protesters.
Concerning South Texas and nuclear power, it is a wonderful location for new nuclear generation. It is half way between San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Houston. Austin is not too far away either. The generating capacity is in the middle of the area that needs it. The transmission infrastructure is already largely in place.
South Texas already has two nuclear unit in operation, so there is an experienced workforce and infrastructure in place. The local population is strongly in favor of nuclear energy and dislikes coal. It would be hard to find a better place for a nuclear plant.