Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Animats 2078 days ago
The US has a huge "wind belt" from the Texas panhandle north to Canada.[1] Big, flat open spaces where there are roads. Higher winds are available in the mountains, but installation and maintenance gets expensive. HVDC lines to Texas, the West Coast, and the Midwest will be needed to exploit that power.

California has four good on-land wind areas, and there are big wind farms on all of them. Time to look elsewhere.

[1] https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/08/us_wi...

1 comments

There's an HVDC line that intends to colocate along railroad right of way to route from Iowa to Illinois [1] to get clean wind power to load centers. Lots of railroad right of way [2] to get renewable generation to load centers. Throw some fiber down while you’re at it, we can always use more fiber everywhere.

[1] https://www.soogreenrr.com/

[2] http://www.mapattacks.com/2015/01/who-owns-americas-rail-inf...