It’s windy almost everyday here and our energy provider is constantly sending texts to conserve energy. Guessing it has something to do with the oil presence in the state but genuinely baffled given how far Austin is from “traditional Texas”
In: Technology
I mean;
1) Austin itself isn’t actually that good for wind energy in comparison to the rest of the state, as it’s in a bit of a valley. The raised hills *around* Austin are considerably better for wind energy generation. Put a different way, if you were a power company wanting to invest in wind energy production, why would you not put it in a more ideal location for generating wind energy?
2) If Texas were a country, their wind generation capacity with current installed wind energy would be like…5th or 6th in the world. The oil money isn’t stopping renewable investment, and if anything all that oil money is *accelerating* growth of renewables.
Edit: See [NREL’s](https://windexchange.energy.gov/files/u/visualization/image/Texas_Wind_Land_Based_WTK100-01.jpg) map of wind speeds, which essentially map directly to wind energy capacity. Austin is garbage in comparison to the surrounding area.
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