It's temporary. Renewables generation is somewhat cyclical - as is overall demand. Renewables generation climbs at this time of year (more water for the dams) but coal plants are often taken offline for maintenance between the summer and winter peaks. The crossover will get more significant (and last longer) each Spring until eventually, renewables do take over - but coal demand is falling faster than renewables generation is climbing (largely due to natural gas).

...isn't working, and won't work.

We don't hear shit from these people about why it is that on April 29, 2017 the atmosphere recorded 414.14 ppm of carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa.

I won't use the words "slightly deceptive" to describe this continuous stream of bull. I'd call it something else, "Trumpian."

Yes both wind and solar are cyclical, but at different times and in different ways.

Wind is so plentiful in Texas some utility plans give away electricity from 9 pm until 9 am.

Texas advantage is that they are a self contained energy market and they saw the need to build the transmission lines from West Texas to the population centers.

The next steps for them is to develop off-shore wind (which is more constant and has different peaks than in West Texas) and to build more solar which they are doing.

Is it just a coincidence that Texas gets over 17% of their electricity from wind and they retired 3 coal plants with over 4 MW of generation capacity in 2018? BTW, those plants represented 20% of the coal capacity in Texas.

Renewable energy definitely follow a curve over the course of the year that tends to peak in the Spring as solar power ramps up (longer days, fewer clouds, the sun higher in the sky)... but the largest component of "renewables" is large-scale hydro and that clearly peaks around this time of year due to heavier rains and (in some areas) melting snow. Many hydro dams have to release water anyway at this point (for irrigation and to avoid overfilling the reservoir)... so they generate all the power they can to avoid wasting it.

At the same time, coal has a predictable double-peak curve each year when demand is highest (summer/winter) and troughs in the Spring/Fall as they take some plants offline for maintenance.

The OP actually links to a page with an illustrative graphic. As you can clearly see... it perfectly matches what I described. A temporary crossover that will get more significant and last longer over time, but will not really cross over on a permanent basis for some years.



Wind is so plentiful in Texas some utility plans give away electricity from 9 pm until 9 am.

Hint... that isn't a good thing. There is little advantage to producing something that is literally worthless. Until grid-scale storage becomes far cheaper, generation sources that can match consumer demand are far more valuable.


Is it just a coincidence that Texas gets over 17% of their electricity from wind and they retired 3 coal plants with over 4 MW of generation capacity in 2018? BTW, those plants represented 20% of the coal capacity in Texas.

I suspect that you meant GWs capacity. 4MW is a couple large wind turbines.

Coincidence? Of course not... but not entirely due to wind (and not particularly relevant on a thread about national generation statistics). ERCOT has three times the natural gas generation capacity as coal and gas is currently cheaper. No point in keeping coal plants open in that environment. Where wind contributes to that decision is in the fact that natural gas plants also tend to ramp up and down faster. So with increased wind penetration also increases the value of the gas plants relative to coal plants.

Any more than when it was announced that CO₂ had reached 400 ppm for the first time. The levels dipped back down, for a time, then crossed 400 ppm again, until eventually, they remained constantly above 400 ppm.