Tuesday, August 14, 2018

The Cautionary Tale of Wind Energy in ERCOT

A newly published paper by The Hon. Charles McConnell, Executive Director Energy and Environment Initiative at Rice University illuminates several issues with wind generated energy.

Key Points 

• The Texas electricity market and its experiment with wind offer a real-life, cautionary tale on the real effects of relying on renewable energy. 

• When Texas needs electricity the most, wind proves most of the time to be a “no-show” while fossil fuels keep on powering the state. 

• Large subsidies spread across Texan and American taxpayers hide the true cost of wind energy to ratepayers. 

• Because renewable energy is essentially driven by subsidies, it is quickly destroying the competitive marketplace for energy in Texas by creating negative pricing, hence discouraging investment in new gas-fired capacity. 

• ERCOT now predicts a reserve margin possibly dropping close to or below its preferred level, creating risks of increased price volatility and rolling outages and brownouts.

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