CNN: Wind Tops Coal in Texas in 3 out of 6 Months in 2019

Guest Fake News analysis by David Middleton

The USA Today version of this non-story was even dumber than CNN’s version…

Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

By Ryan Prior, CNN
Updated 6:24 PM ET, Thu July 25, 2019

(CNN) Wind power has surpassed coal for the first time in Texas, according to a new report.

The numbers cap an enormous rise in wind power in the nation’s top energy-producing state over the past decades.

Wind has generated 22% of the state’s electrical needs this year. It just edged out coal, which provided 21% of the Lone Star State’s power, according to the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, which manages electrical flow on about 90% of the Texan grid.

[…]

Yet while wind has soared and coal-generated power has cooled, natural gas still accounts for the largest share of the state’s energy mix, generating 46% of its power in 2003 and staying strong at 44% last year.

[…]

New Jersey’s largest and oldest power company, PSEG, announced Thursday that it’s pledging to go carbon-free by 2050.

“We believe climate change is real. There is this crescendo that’s building,” CEO Ralph Izzo told CNN Business.

Darth Vader: This is CNN

Almost all of these energy “journalists” show up on LinkedIn as 3rd Connections… Young Ryan is the first to show up as 2nd Connection. This means he’s connected to at least one person connected to me… Scary. Ryan has a 2012 BA in English and International Affairs from the Univesrity of Georgia.

The ERCOT report didn’t mention anything about wind topping coal and certainly didn’t refer to CNN’s fake news from yesterday about PSEG. It’s an Excel spreadsheet ERCOT periodically issues. From January through June, 2019, wind power generated 21.8% of ERCOT’s electricity and coal generated 21.4%.

Clearly these intrepid energy “journalists” were capable of doing just enough math to get to their breathless headlines… But, “you can’t fix stupid.”

Wind topped coal for the Jan-Jun period entirely due to the fact that April was very windy, as it usually is.

Figure 1. Texas electricity generation by fuel type.

Wind works fairly well in Texas for exactly one reason: Physical geography.

Figure 2. Texas 80-Meter Wind Resource Map (NREL)

There’s just one slight problem here: Wind is seasonal.

Figure 3. Wind generation seasonal patterns vary across the United States (EIA)

No matter how many unicorn wishes are made, wind will probably not beat coal in Texas over the rest of the year. I downloaded EROT’s 2018 Demand and Energy Report. Here’s a comparison of wind generation in 2018 vs 2019.