Wow actual infrastructure spending? Awesome!
The projects will enable nearly 1,000 miles of new electric transmission development and 7,100 megawatts of new capacity in Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
So it’s a bailout
I understand why you would be cynical but don’t understand at all how you came to that conclusion
It’s paying to rebuild infrastructure where the state government has been neglecting. I’m sure part of it will be to rebuild what’s been destroyed by the hurricane.
So bailing out who? Sounds like they’re bailing out the people by building a more resilient energy grid, which some might instead define as an investment in the future
It’s paying to rebuild infrastructure where the state government has been neglecting.
Besides Texas, none of those states listed are population dense or otherwise rich. In fact the low population density may require the cost per subscriber to be significantly higher because more infrastructure is required to bring service to fewer people. This is a perfect example of good federal government spending.
Is your preference that if these regions can’t afford to build/maintain this infrastructure they should go without?
the fact that texas’ jank ass disconnected grid is getting a dime of federal money is frustrating. they want their own grid, they can have it. if they want federal dollars to fix what they broke then they should be forced to connect and follow the same rules as everyone else.
I think a small portion of Texas is connected to the federal grid. Maybe this would extend that?
There was an article posted today on /c/texas (Lemmy World, I think) about them actually connecting to the national grid.
I guess there actually was a cold day in hell…
it does appear that ERCOT finally saw the writing on the wall. i’m not opposed to giving texas money for their grid if it means they will be subjected to the same federal oversight that occurs elsewhere. https://www.energy.gov/articles/biden-harris-administration-invests-15-billion-bolster-nations-electricity-grid-and-0
It doesn’t really seem like a bailout.
The packaging says reliability, but the description within the article looks less like neighborhood reliability, and more like national grid reliability.
Specifically, those grid interconnections - the Cimarron Link, Southern Spirit, and Southline. Cimarron will connect Texas to massive wind farms in Oklahoma - power that isn’t going anywhere. It’ll connect Texas to Mississippi (Southern Spirit), and Texas to Tucson. I don’t know about the Mississippi connection, but Tucson is connected to Hoover Dam, which means that losses from transmission be damned, once this is all done, power from (at least) Oklahoma can be sent to LA the next time Lake Meade dries up, with the possibility of power from the east coast finding its way to the west, and vice versa.
As other commenters pointed out, Texas already has some of the least expensive energy in the country, so adding capacity doesn’t make a lot of sense. And transmission lines only adds reliability in the sense that there’s more supply, but most of their failures are not supply related. My understanding of the adding capacity part is just a dovetail into adding solar capacity to states with a lot of land that will become increasingly useless for farming as the climate changes. It just so happens that Biden is trying to create a U.S.-based solar panel and battery production industry. Not a bad strategy to throw cash into generating/subsidizing demand at the same time as we start adding tariffs to imports of those products. (It’s not like, a great strategy, either - because unless the U.S. is willing to subsidize their market longer than China is willing to subsidize theirs, then the U.S. will not really ever have a competitive industry, but I guess if they view it as a matter of national security, then it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense.)
$1.5 billion won’t actually get you a whole lot.
Better than nothing though. Considering utilities can do this as cap projects, I feel like this money is better spent on bridges/roads.
Who is going to own the infrastructure when it is complete? Outside of like three main utilities, there are no state owned utilities. (Tennessee, Bonneville, and LCRA, I believe).
How about we stop handing out tax money to private corporations.
not for the nimrods in texas though…EDIT: holy shit, i stand corrected
