[ROCKMAN]

Pusher - I always find it amusing to hear anyone bitch about ID knowing that every one of them was benefitting from ID policies that brought them most of their roads and all of their utilities No one would be posting here if ID laws didn't exist. LOL.

[Synapsid]

ROCKMAN,

What is ID? In this context, I mean.

[efarmer]

I worked for two Texas Corporations before I started my own business 28 years ago.
So a Missouri Mule embedded systems designer visited Texas hundreds of times and worked with engineers there one on one often.

Texas is the energy technology equivalent of Silicon Valley's semiconductor and software prowess. Whenever you get the concentration of energy engineers and technical expertise that gathered in Texas since the 1930's, you end up with innovation inertia that is capable of the monumental projects in existing energy or newer forms of energy with the moxie of having proven they pull off such projects on a regular basis.

Not shocked at all that Texas is $6B USD out in front of getting $2.5B through the DOE on wind energy. How in the hell they pick Governor's is beyond me, I just hope they like them so much they stop sharing them with us by sending them to Washington D.C.

[kublikhan]

It is a decades-old dream: a single, vast North American electric grid, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Mexico to the Arctic Circle. Such a continent-wide supergrid would let officials transmit the tens of gigawatts of wind-generated power from the Great Plains to cities on both coasts.

An ambitious project known as Tres Amigas, eight years in the making, is finally getting under way. Eventually it will link the three largest North American grids: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection, which together cover the lower 48 states plus 8 Canadian provinces. Tres Amigas, located in eastern New Mexico, where the three grids converge, will be a transmission “superstation,” able to transfer up to 20 gigawatts of electricity in almost any direction.

Last November, construction workers began building the first piece of the first phase of the project: a 56-kilometer transmission line to connect three new wind farms to the superstation site and then to the Blackwater substation, which connects to the Western grid. The 345-kilovolt line is scheduled to be electrified by the end of 2016. The ultimate plan is to construct three more lines to substations in Texas, one of which connects to the Texas grid and the other two connecting to the Eastern grid.

Three Become One: The Tres Amigas superstation, now under construction outside Clovis, N.M., aims to interconnect the three main power grids of North America.

The four sets of transmission lines would converge at Tres Amigas, a 58-square-kilometer site where the company will install high-voltage DC converters for converting AC to DC and back again, plus a modest 5 MW of storage for regulating voltage and frequency. As more partners sign on, additional converters and storage can be added. Other plans call for an electricity-market hub to let traders take advantage of the differences in electricity prices between regions. On 10 August 2015, for instance, the price difference between ERCOT and the Western grid hit $2,331.54 per megawatt-hour. Capitalizing on such disparities should generally lower rates for customers and stimulate more investment.

Having a high-voltage DC node that connects existing AC networks—a configuration called an HVDC overlay—will make the entire grid more stable and responsive to outages and faults. "Very large integrated AC systems tend to get wobbly. An HVDC overlay, with its ability to move a lot of power quickly, will provide a huge reliability enhancement as the electricity grid grows.” Grid operators in Western Europe are already installing or planning a number of these HVDC overlays, he adds. China and India are going even further, installing transmission grids based entirely on HVDC. A few links already exist between the main U.S. grids. But Tres Amigas would bring together all three grids in one place and at much higher power levels.

"Life is going to get a lot more interesting as renewables replace fossil-fuel plants, and we’ll need to move large blocks of power to where generation is suddenly insufficient. A project like Tres Amigas will make us evolve the way we need to evolve.”

Will the U.S. Finally Get a Unified Power Grid?

I hadn't even heard about the Tres Amigas station and plans to tie all 3 grids together into one massive supergrid. I think this is a good move as well.

[ROCKMAN]

syn - Sorry: meant ED...eminent domain.

Farmer: about Perry...you need to understand how the Texas state govt is designed. In reality the governor has little control. Actually the Lt. governor has a much greater impact: he's elected separately from the governor and runs the state senate. The senate is where all the power exist. And they don't get re-elected if they don't keep the voters happy.

Again it's not complicated: it just common sense BUSINESS decisions. Which might not always be very environmentally friendly and often not very politically correct. But this is Texas after all and in general folks here don't really give a f*ck what others think of them. LOL.

[Synapsid]

ROCKMAN,

Got it. Thanks.

[StarvingLion]

"it just common sense BUSINESS decisions"

No its deindustrialization, which is suicide.

Shutting down coal plants, nuclear plants...FOR LOUSY USELESS WINDMILLS?

Apparently, you are devoid of common sense.

"And most important: wind power is in no way competing with coal power: despite being tied with Germany for #4 in wind gerneration the coal plants in Texas haven't lost $1 to the wind generators. Wind was never planned to replace coal but rather to supplement it."

Man, you iz GULLIBLE. Its like eating one patty of ground beef a day and then supplementing it with lawn grass to get more protein because its economical only because the government is paying you to eat lawn grass.

The real reason you won't build another coal plant is because your "powerful" Texas economy is bullshit fake money. Its a dead economy that is rapidly collapsing.

Just like the laughable Deep Learning Kalifornia Horseshit Upload-Your-Brain-To-Google Economy and the German We-Don't-Have-Much-Sunlight-or-Wind-but-who-cares-with-fake-money Saurkraut Economy.

Kalifornia, Texas, Germany = DEINDUSTRIALIZATION...END OF STORY...SUICIDE.

[vtsnowedin]

syn - Sorry: meant ED...eminent domain.

Farmer: about Perry...you need to understand how the Texas state govt is designed. In reality the governor has little control. Actually the Lt. governor has a much greater impact: he's elected separately from the governor and runs the state senate. The senate is where all the power exist. And they don't get re-elected if they don't keep the voters happy.

Again it's not complicated: it just common sense BUSINESS decisions. Which might not always be very environmentally friendly and often not very politically correct. But this is Texas after all and in general folks here don't really give a f*ck what others think of them. LOL.

Hey Rockman ; Would you happen to know how much tax revenue Texas rakes in from the oil and coal extraction industries? Back when Perry was running for president he kept bragging about the booming Texas economy and how many jobs "he" created. It occurred to me that if you took the oil revenue away from him his job performance would go way down.
So what percent of the Texas state budget is oil money?

[ROCKMAN]

Vt – A lot of revenue from the oil patch. Let’s just look at the sever4ence tax the state collects. This won’t include the corporate income taxes or the jobs benefits.

The baseline Texas severance tax on oil and gas is: Gas severance tax = 7.5% of market value of gas produced and saved. Oil severance tax = 4.6% of market value of oil produced. Condensate tax = 4.6% of market value. And here’s a bit on the Texas “Rainy Day Fund” which receives just a portion of the severance taxes collected:

“The fund gets its money mainly from oil and gas severance taxes — a big chunk of any collected above amounts paid in 1987. For nearly two decades, there was never more than $300 million in the fund. Budget writers often tapped it, without much ado. Since Republicans cemented their control of the Legislature in 2003, though, a revival of oil and gas exploration has been filling the fund rapidly.

The fund’s evolution tracked changes in conservative Republicans’ priorities during former Gov. Rick Perry’s tenure. He was pleased when lawmakers drew down $100 million in 2005, to launch his pet Emerging Technology Fund. But after that, he joined tea party activists and fiscal hawks to fiercely resist huge withdrawals. So the pot grew bigger than Craymer and his colleagues ever envisioned.

As of Feb. 28, the fund had nearly $8.5 billion. Comptroller Glenn Hegar says it will hit $11.1 billion by the end of the next two-year budget cycle. And that’s even after nearly $4 billion was taken in the past 18 months to pay for voter-approved water projects and roads. Craymer, now head of the business-backed Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, called the idea that the fund could hit the ceiling set by the 1987 constitutional amendment “a problem we never thought we’d face. ”The cap is now $14.1 billion — 10 percent of a complicated calculation based on about 70 percent of the state budget.”

As far as the budget goes here are the numbers for 2015: NG severance tax = $1.3 BILLION and oil severance tax = $2.9 BILLION. Or 1.2% and 2.6% respectively of the state revenue for that year. And it’s that small % that allows 2/3 of it to be directed to the Rainy Day Fund. But again understand that the LT govenor and the state senate controlled the situation for the most part...not Perry.

[vtsnowedin]

Thanks Rockman.
I was surprised it was such a small share of the state budget. Then I goggled up your whole state budget and find Texas spends less then half as much per person as Vermont does. You guys are doing something right.

[ROCKMAN]

vt - Doing it right in some respects such as the Rainy Day Fund. But not a lot to brag about when it comes to supporting education and social services. And I forgot to mention that each county also gets a smaller check from each producer. And of course the landowners get around 20% to 25% of the total oil/NG revenue. Which also explains why our land owners (farmers and ranchers) actually represent a rather strong oil patch group of "lobbyists". Fossil fuels have been very good for the state and it's citizens. And will continue to be good for many years down the road though not as good as the last 8 years.

And I'll post again what shocked me a few years ago: I found out that PA, the birthplace of il drill, has never collected a $1 of severance tax for oil/NG production in that state. Now those were some very good oil patch lobbyists up there. LOL.

[efarmer]

Rockman,
My girlfriend lives in Baytown, so I pop Houston often to see my main squeeze. When the banksters in New York gamed America to fleece the foreign central banks, most states suffered, especially us in the Midwest but not Texas. As you know, now with the Saudi's doing weaponized pumping, Houston has a bunch of oil patch people in the hurt zone that skated the bankster shakedown by working the patch previously. Worked for Perot in Dallas, Swiss firm with US HQ in Fort Worth, and feel at home in Texas even if I can't line dance worth a shit.

Knowing Texas to be pragmatic, smart, and biased for action to a greater degree than most areas,
Perry does baffle me. I liken it to getting on an airliner and looking in the cockpit and there's a chimp with a Captain's hat on. If i catch your drift, the chimp has Chuck Yeager sitting in the copilot seat, so all is well.

[vtsnowedin]

They make funny movies with less plot then that!!
I liked Dolly Parton's chicken Ranch and the Governor' s song.
OOh I like to tease um
I like to dance a little side step
And slip out the door.

[hvacman]

KJ: re: zero HVDC interties other than small experiments.

Looks Like LA Water and Power have been recently dabbling in small experiments, if "recent" means operational since 1970, and "small" means an 846 mile HVDC line from the Columbia River in Oregon to LA, capable of carrying 3.1 gigawatts of power, about 48% of LA's peak capacity requirements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie.

[hvacman]

I liken it to getting on an airliner and looking in the cockpit and there's a chimp with a Captain's hat on. If i catch your drift, the chimp has Chuck Yeager sitting in the copilot seat, so all is well.

e-farmer ' LOL!!!! About the most creative/accurate political metaphor I've read this month! Extrapolating it to the national level - if Trump is nominated/elected, we REALLY need to pay attention to his VP and cabinet selections:) Hopefully there will be at least ONE with The Right Stuff. The bigger question is - would Chuck ever want to fly with a chimp? Seems the chimp issue was why he preferred test piloting to astronauting.

[ROCKMAN]

efarmer - Actually with him it was more like seeing an seasoned pilot in the cockpit with the Perry monkey serving drinks in first class. Just another pretty face fronting for the man behind the curtain. LOL.

Small world: the Rockman lives in Baytown across the loop from the ExxonMobil refiner.

[efarmer]

She lives out by San Jacinto mall by two lakes. Very good Rockman, maybe we will cross paths on Garth road, probably at the new Kroger. If I see a guy with 5 cartons of Blue Bell ice cream I will say
Rockman to see if he rubbernecks around...

E