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A comment on Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now. Parent comment

Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now by mrDmrTmrJ on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @10:56PM (#26175544)
You're correct that, "30 GW of thermal capacity is offline for various weather-related reasons is the primary reason the power is out."

I think wind can play a huge role in fixing this. Check out: https://www.windy.com/?37.539,-94.134,4

And you've got plenty of massive offshore wind resources on both sides of the continent that are blowing right now (Feb 17th 7:49pm PDT) if we had installed capacity.

We need to keep our nuclear fleet (20% of electrical generation) and invest in a TON of transmission.

If we had this electrical grid, we'd be doing far better: https://twitter.com/Sammy_Roth/status/1356442256866037766

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Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now by lsllc on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:08PM (#26175646)
Transmission lines aren't so easy, for example the Northern Pass project to bring power from Quebec Hydro into New England failed due to local opposition:

https://www.vnews.com/northern-pass-eversource-hydroquebec-2...

I do like the idea (from the linked tweet) of underground transmission lines (underground alongside railroads is probably mitigates the NIMBY objections):

https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power

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Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now by acidburnNSA on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:10PM (#26175653)
Ask anyone who has planned and installed a long-haul transmission line in the past 40 years and they'll tell you that that's gonna be extremely hard. It's simple technically, as is building a lot of a standardized nuclear plant, but it's not easy and will be hit by massive amounts of NIMBY.
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Re:Electricity over $900/MWh in most of Western US now by mrDmrTmrJ on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @11:24PM (#26175772)
Yes, the regulatory and NIMBY challenges are extreme.

Best way to do it is to go: 1. All underground transmission. 2. Expand the natural gas pipeline permitting process (which is controlled at the Federal level and already overrides state's jurisdiction) to include underground electrical transmission.

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