Solar Installers

[swake]

Why did they build power plants here that all the power got sent to black out city California?

None of it went into Oklahomas grid.

This isn't true. More than that, it's not even possible.

[dbacksfan 2.0]

FWIW, from September of 2012:

Reuters) - U.S. Internet company Google Inc on Wednesday agreed to buy 48 megawatts (MW) of wind energy for its Oklahoma data center from the Canadian Hills wind power project in Oklahoma, which is expected to enter service later this year.

In a release, Google said it has been working with its local utility, the Grand River Dam Authority, to procure additional renewable energy since plugging in the Oklahoma data center in 2011.

In conjunction with the electricity the Grand River Dam Authority already supplies Google to operate its data center, Google said it would pay a premium to purchase renewable energy generated by Canadian Hills.

The Google data center is located in Mayes County about 170 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.

Google said the purchase brings the total amount of renewable energy it has contracted for to over 260 MW.

One megawatt can power about 1,000 homes.

Boston-based power generator Atlantic Power Corp owns 99 percent of the 298-MW Canadian Hills wind farm, which is located in El Reno about 30 miles west of Oklahoma City, according to Atlantic Power's website.

Atlantic Power said it sells all of the power from Canadian Hills to three power companies: Southwestern Electric Power Authority, the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority and Grand River Dam Authority.

https://www.reuters.com/article/net-us-utilities-google-oklahoma-wind/google-buys-wind-power-for-oklahoma-data-center-idUSBRE88P1DZ20120926


Southwestern Electric Power Authority

Southwestern Electric Power Company serves 547,800 customers in northwestern and central Louisiana, western Arkansas, East Texas and the Panhandle area of North Texas. Its headquarters are in Shreveport, La.

https://www.swepco.com/company/about/


And from December of 2016

MINCO, Okla. — Last year, Google consumed as much energy as the city of San Francisco. Next year, it said, all of that energy will come from wind farms and solar panels.

The online giant said on Tuesday that all of its data centers around the world will be entirely powered with renewable energy sources sometime next year.

This is not to say that Google computers will consume nothing but wind and solar power. Like almost any company, Google gets power from a power company, which operates an energy grid typically supplied by a number of sources, including hydroelectric dams, natural gas, coal and wind power.

What Google has done over the last decade, with relatively little fanfare, is participate in a number of large-scale deals with renewable producers, typically guaranteeing to buy the energy they produce with their wind turbines and solar cells. With those guarantees, wind companies can obtain bank financing to build more turbines.

The power created by the renewables is plugged into the utility grid, so that Google's usage presents no net consumption of fossil fuels and the pool of electricity gets a relatively larger share of renewable sources.

"We are the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world," said Joe Kava, Google's senior vice president of technical infrastructure. "It's good for the economy, good for business and good for our shareholders."



Google hopes that success in working with large wind farms, like the 50,000-acre facility in Minco, Okla., which supplies Google's large data center in Pryor, Okla., will spur development of the industry. NextEra Energy, which owns the wind farm, has about 115 wind farms in the United States and Canada.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/technology/google-says-it-will-run-entirely-on-renewable-energy-in-2017.html

And this year

Single-largest wind farm in North America
The 356 GE turbine-powered wind farm, which spans Blaine and Custer counties in north central Oklahoma, is one of the largest wind farms in the world.

Traverse is expected to generate 3.8 million megawatt-hours annually for American Electric Power's Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) and Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) customers in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Traverse is the third and final wind farm that makes up the North Central Energy Facilities, which also includes the 199 MW Sundance and 287 MW Maverick wind farms, which began commercial operation in April and September 2021, respectively.

https://electrek.co/2022/03/24/the-single-largest-wind-farm-in-north-america-comes-online-in-oklahoma/

[whoatown]

This isn't true. More than that, it's not even possible.

Not talking about solar installations.  Actual pollute the environment plants.  Sending all the power to California instead of anywhere in Oklahoma.

[swake]

Not talking about solar installations.  Actual pollute the environment plants.  Sending all the power to California instead of anywhere in Oklahoma.

What you claim is simply not even possible. Power has a possible transmission distance of about 300 miles max.

Your post is fake news.

[patric]

What you claim is simply not even possible. Power has a possible transmission distance of about 300 miles max.

Your post is fake news.

His post probably doesnt even qualify as fake news. What was the "source?"

Now to be fair, we had rolling blackouts in Tulsa during the near-collapse of the Texas grid in February 2021.
If that wasnt bad enough, our own Corporation Commission rolled over in one of the worse cases of price gouging in recent history:
https://fortune.com/2021/07/09/gas-sellers-made-11-billion-texas-winter-blackout/

Just a reminder for anyone considering solar: choose a "Peak Shaving" installation instead of "Net Metering" if you want to still have power when the next big storm hits.

[swake]

His post probably doesnt even qualify as fake news. What was the "source?"

Now to be fair, we had rolling blackouts in Tulsa during the near-collapse of the Texas grid in February 2021.
If that wasnt bad enough, our own Corporation Commission rolled over in one of the worse cases of price gouging in recent history:
https://fortune.com/2021/07/09/gas-sellers-made-11-billion-texas-winter-blackout/

Just a reminder for anyone considering solar: choose a "Peak Shaving" installation instead of "Net Metering" if you want to still have power when the next big storm hits.

Sure, the power supply in south Texas wasn't hardened for extreme cold and crashed which impacted north Texas which impacted Oklahoma, even though Texas and Oklahoma aren't on the same grids. Thus the "rolling", but I am 100% sure you know that. But Whoa doesn't.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Not talking about solar installations.  Actual pollute the environment plants.  Sending all the power to California instead of anywhere in Oklahoma.

So sauerkraut is back in different guise.   Still spewing lies.

[whoatown]

So can we agree that the sky is blue during the daytime?

Or are we going to debate that too?

[Red Arrow]

So can we agree that the sky is blue during the daytime?

Or are we going to debate that too?

Sky is mostly gray when overcast.

[patric]

Not talking about solar installations.  Actual pollute the environment plants.  Sending all the power to California instead of anywhere in Oklahoma.

So one wonders why the non-sequiturs in a "Solar Installers" post? 

On topic:
Unless you are completely "off-grid" you still pay PSO for the privilege of being their customer regardless of having solar panels or not.

Infrastructure Fee
Franchise Fee
City Tax
County Tax
Winter Storm Cost Recovery Rider
Thats in addition to the Rate billing and Cost of Fuel, so utility company claims that solar customers arent paying their fair share of of utility upkeep dont wash.

Re: the "Sun Tax" OG&E and PSO wanted...
"Rates, for regulated entities, are developed through a full audit and litigated hearing. The purpose of HB 1456 was to ensure that customers who were able to offset some of their usage through self-generation would not be subsidized by those who could not do so.  This subsidization could occur as some of the fixed costs of the utility are passed through in the usage portion of the rate. Therefore, if a customer is no longer using as much power, they could not be covering the fixed costs they cause on the system.   The audits for any future tariff will review these potential issues as well as any system wide benefits that can be quantified related to the addition of self-generation.

To date no regulated utility has provided sufficient information to identify if or the level of subsidy that occurs with the installation of Distributed Generation."
https://oklahoma.gov/occ/divisions/public-utility/electric-utility/netmetering.html

Battery technology has had great advances since then, and storing your excess generation for use at home pretty much makes Net Metering moot.

[whoatown]

Sky is mostly gray when overcast.

At least the sky isn't falling.

[whoatown]

So one wonders why the non-sequiturs in a "Solar Installers" post? 

On topic:
Unless you are completely "off-grid" you still pay PSO for the privilege of being their customer regardless of having solar panels or not.

Infrastructure Fee
Franchise Fee
City Tax
County Tax
Winter Storm Cost Recovery Rider
Thats in addition to the Rate billing and Cost of Fuel, so utility company claims that solar customers arent paying their fair share of of utility upkeep dont wash.

Re: the "Sun Tax" OG&E and PSO wanted...
"Rates, for regulated entities, are developed through a full audit and litigated hearing. The purpose of HB 1456 was to ensure that customers who were able to offset some of their usage through self-generation would not be subsidized by those who could not do so.  This subsidization could occur as some of the fixed costs of the utility are passed through in the usage portion of the rate. Therefore, if a customer is no longer using as much power, they could not be covering the fixed costs they cause on the system.   The audits for any future tariff will review these potential issues as well as any system wide benefits that can be quantified related to the addition of self-generation.

To date no regulated utility has provided sufficient information to identify if or the level of subsidy that occurs with the installation of Distributed Generation."
https://oklahoma.gov/occ/divisions/public-utility/electric-utility/netmetering.html

Battery technology has had great advances since then, and storing your excess generation for use at home pretty much makes Net Metering moot.

Those grid tie systems are a strange animal. 

And it doesn't seem like PSO will really let you go off grid all of a sudden.

[patric]

Electric reliability performance during 2021 Winter Storm Uri, from best to worse:

Hydroelectric
Solar and wind
Nuclear
Natural Gas

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuarhodes/2022/02/15/one-year-later-the-storm-that-knocked-texas-out-cold/

[heironymouspasparagus]

So can we agree that the sky is blue during the daytime?

Or are we going to debate that too?

Sure!   Can agree with actual facts.  What you are spewing is NOT.

[whoatown]

PSO must be strong arming cities into adding a capital improvement tax to your electric bill.

https://archive.org/details/cobok-Explaining_the_PSO_Franchise_Agreement_renewal

They did this in Tulsa and now they're leaving it up to the voters in Broken Arrow to do the same.