Largest US wind/solar/storage facility

Caprock Solar Facility, outside of Tucumcari, New Mexico, another of Western Farmers' solar farms.  Western Farmers Electric Cooperative buys the 25 MW of energy it produces as part of a long-term power purchase agreement with its developer.
Source: The Oklahoman

From CleanTechnica:

Western Farmers Electric Cooperative, one of the largest electricity co-ops in Oklahoma, has signed a power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy Resources. Under the terms of the PPA, Western Farmers will receive 500 MW of electricity from the Skeleton Creek renewable energy project. The terms of the PPA have not been announced.

Located in parts of three counties in Oklahoma, Skeleton Creek will include 250 MW of wind power, 250 MW of solar power, and 200 MW of battery storage with a duration of 4 hours for a total of 800 MW. It is the largest combined wind, solar, and storage facility so far in the United States.

Gary Roulet, the cooperative’s CEO, tells The Oklahoman the project will help the cooperative boost the amount of reliable, low-cost and environmentally friendly energy it provides its customers. “With the prices of wind and solar energy lower than ever, we are now able to pair those with battery storage to make more affordable, renewable energy available to customers for more hours of the day — even when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.”

From The Oklahoman:

“Wind has the tendency to blow during nighttimes, while solar generates its energy during the day,” said Phil Schaeffer, the cooperative's principal resource planning engineer. “We are really hoping to see how battery storage interacts with that whole profile.

“Hopefully, that will translate to better grid stability.”

This is the pattern everywhere: wind plus solar with 4 hours of storage.  And it's cheap.  Wind is negatively correlated with solar—it blows at night and in winter, when solar is either absent or low.   With a mixture of wind and solar, 4 hours of storage is enough to take renewables to 80% of the grid.

Oklahoma isn't working

After years of tax cuts, Oklahoma is barely functioning. 

From The Guardian:

A teacher panhandles on a roadside to buy supplies for her third-grade classroom. Entire school districts resort to four-day school weeks. Nearly one in four children struggle with hunger. 

A city overpass crumbles and swarms of earthquakes shake the region – the underground disposal of oil and gas industry wastes have caused the tremors. Wildfires burn out of control: cuts to state forestry services mean that out-of-state firefighting crews must be called in.

A paralyzed and mentally ill veteran is left on the floor of a county jail. Guards watch for days until the prisoner dies. A death row inmate violently convulses on the gurney as prison officials experiment with an untested cocktail for execution.

Do these snapshots of Oklahoma show a failing state?

Added up, the facts evoke a social breakdown across the board. Not only does Oklahoma lead the country in cuts to education, it’s also number one in rates of female incarceration, places second in male incarceration, and also leads in school expulsion rates. One in 12 Oklahomans have a felony conviction.

Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law Center wrote in an essay that states begin to fail when the contract between citizens and public institutions breaks down. States “lose control over the means of violence, and cannot create peace or stability for their populations or control their territories. They cannot ensure economic growth or any reasonable distribution of social goods.”

It may be hard to believe, but entry-level employees with a high school diploma at the popular convenience store QuikTrip make more than teachers in Oklahoma.

[Read more here]

Oklahoma taxpayers are fed up.

Riding high on the oil boom of the late 2000s, the state followed the Kansas model and slashed taxes. But the promised prosperity never came. In many cases, it was just the opposite.

Around 20 percent of Oklahoma's schools now hold classes just four days a week. Last year, Highway Patrol officers were given a mileage limit because the state couldn't afford to put gas in their tanks. Medicaid provider rates have been cut to the point that rural nursing homes and hospitals are closing, and the prisons are so full that the director of corrections says they're on the brink of a crisis.

[Read more here]


Neo-liberalism isn't working.  Time for a re-think.