Both solar and wind are popular and growing.

Texas generates more wind energy than any other state (in gigawatthours). I'm unsure if any other state has a higher percentage of their total production in wind. Texas is around 20% of total in wind on ongoing basis (and another few percent in solar).

During recent heatwave solar and wind provided nearly 40%, " Several experts told CNN that it's owed in large part to strong performances from wind and solar, which generated 27 gigawatts of electricity during Sunday's peak demand -- close to 40% of the total needed."

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/14/us/texas-energy-record-solar-...

Yes, Texas is the #1 producer of solar (by far) and #2 for wind.

I had solar installed on our house last year - just before supply chain issues got really bad - and so far this summer, it's generated enough to power our house every day. Of course, not every circuit is connected to it though, so I get to deal with the bs of "net billing" but the capacity is there.

At .08/kwh probably not, but at .16kwh, I'd bet they start gaining momentum very quickly!

That's not true. 73% of Republican want more solar farms and 62% want more wind farms: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/08/most-americ...

This also tracks with my experience. I know tons of conservative people who are leasing their farms out to build windmills or installing their own solar panels.

Let's just ignore that the number of Republicans supporting renewables has dropped 15% in the last 5 years and is still trending down.

Because of partisan divisions like the parent comment was trying to further. Conservatives have no ideological opposition to renewable energy, some are just starting to oppose it because "the team likes it" and politics is becoming more about tribalism than actual policy. If people stopped trying to paint people on the other side as "the enemy", we wouldn't have these kinds of issues forming.

There's a big divide between politics rhetoric from political parties, and what's actually going on economically on the ground.

Not only is Texas installing massive amounts of solar, wind, and battery storage, it's also mostly going into rural areas that are more politically conservative.

I wonder if they get the same conservative "No Industrial Solar" propaganda that pervades rural Iowa. A little bit of searching seems to indicate rural opposition to renewables to be fairly common.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2022/01/27/backlash...

Republican approval of renewable energy is also dropping year over year and is down 15% from 5 years ago.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/08/most-americ...

It seems there is a pretty clear divide in partisan and urban / rural support.

Most rural people have no problem with industrial development unless it's highly polluting (and by "highly" I mean "orders of magnitude above and beyond what it takes to make people here hand wring").

Declining support for renewable energy seems to be a result of team politics.

Painting with a pretty broad brush there. Rhetoric and reality frequently don't match. The strongest Trump-supporting conservative in my family happens to be one of the few of us who owns an EV, as well. Money talks.