Posted on 01/08/2017 8:46:50 PM PST by Lorianne
The story going around was that Las Vegas is now completely powered by renewable energy. The story contains a kernel of truth, but then that kernel got distorted into something that went viral, but was clearly untrue.
Why does it matter? Because when people start to believe energy myths, they start to have unrealistic expectations. That leads to bad energy policies. After all, if the glittering lights of Las Vegas can run entirely on renewable energy, there is no reason we can’t run the entire country on renewable energy. While it’s fine to have that as a target, if we start to base energy policies on that expectation, we are likely to create energy shortages.
The kernel of truth was a story about the city government of Las Vegas. The story first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal was City of Las Vegas reaches clean energy goal. In that story, they explain that the city government in Las Vegas has been moving toward running totally on renewable energy. Here is the key piece of information: “Through a combination of direct generation and credits, the city is powering more than 140 facilities, along with streetlights, with renewable sources.”
So the city government is now running its ~140 facilities on renewable power. Then, whether through careless reporting, incompetence, or intentionally misleading readers with click bait, that story morphed from “City of Las Vegas” to “city of Las Vegas” to simply “Las Vegas is running on renewable energy.” To emphasize that point, many stories ran a picture of the Las Vegas Strip with the accompanying headline.
One of the worst offenders was Popular Mechanics, which had the following up for four days before modifying the title and issuing a “clarification:”
(Excerpt) Read more at energytrendsinsider.com ...
It’s really easy to increase renewable energy percentages for major cities. Just build Hoover Dams next to each city. One for each 500,000 people should be the ballpark goal. One 725 foot tall concrete dam should be all that Miami needs.
Liberals like to lie and deceive. Nothing new there. However even lowlife liberals have to obey the laws of physics.
Las Vegas could eventually generate a significant fraction of its energy needs from solar, but few other cities in the U.S. would be able to duplicate it, so it isn’t much of a “model” for others.
When all your motels, casinos & other buildings are covered with lights, you don’t even need street lighting.
***Las Vegas is now completely powered by renewable energy.***
I’ll believe that when they shut down and decommission the coal fired Jim Bridger Power plants there.
What was it running on before?
Nuclear power is pretty darned renewable.
The simple answer to our power needs through hydroelectric is an answer that needs to be expanded. Currently, hydroelectric only provides 6.1% of the total U.S. electricity.
You can go thermal through the ground, hydro on a smaller scale many places, solar is iffy like wind.
The public sector is all that matters. “The City Government of Las Vegas” and “Las Vegas” are interchangeable terms. The nonpublic functions are irrelevant. We all exist to serve the state.
You just gotta get your mind right.
Now what is your dirt doing in Boss King’s ditch?
This whole argument is stupid. They have been renewable from the time the hydro-electric generators at Hoover Dam went online in 1936. All they need is an ample supply of water to keep it going. That has been an issue for some time as the drought in California has also affected the snow base in the Rockies which also feeds Hoover and Glen Canyon.
Now, for going solar or wind, one could deduce that could augment the normal outputs of the dam, but every time I have been there, I have never seen all of them (17) being used at the same time and usually only about half are turning. There are 9 on the Arizona side and 8 on the Nevada along with the baby ones (2) that were originally used to bring up power when first built and now to supply power for the dam oprerations.
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