[Photo: Zetter via iStock ]
Oil has long been the energy king in Texas and will be for the foreseeable future, but the Lone Star state also leads the country in wind power capacity.
Massive power purchase agreements for factories such as Arlington’s General Motors Assembly Plant and other large data centers and facilities are propelling the wind industry to new heights, the Dallas Morning News reported.
GM expects all of its Texas facilities to be wind-powered in the future. Facebook’s forthcoming data center in Fort Worth will be powered by a wind farm its helping build near Wichita Falls.
Texas has more than 20,000 megawatts of wind power capacity, nearly one-fourth of the total capacity in the country.
The wind doesn’t always blow and that’s been a drawback of wind power for years, but Texas has enough capacity statewide that it evens out.
Solar power is also growing fast in Texas with more than 9,000 people working in the industry in 2016, up 34 percent from the previous year, according to the Solar Foundation.
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The inaugural October 8th Texas Blockchain Summit could be a watershed event for making Texas "the jurisdiction of choice" for Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, will host a wide array of speakers including Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis.
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Battery-powered smart meters, smoke detectors, video doorbells, and many medical and industrial devices all need one thing: the capacity to support peak loads and backup power for continuous operation. TI's new DC/DC converter makes that happen while delivering impressive increases in power output and battery life.
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John B. Billingsley, the man behind renewable industry leaders Tri Global Energy and Sunfinity Renewable Energy, shares his experience as a leading developer of wind farms in "Texas Wind Force." In honor of Earth Day, on April 22 the ebook will be available for a free digital download.
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Nonprofit BUiLT is hosting the event to highlight the success and possibilities of Black tech talent in the region. “There is no talent pipeline problem,” says Peter Beasley, co-founder of the Blacks United in Leading Technology International. “Black tech talent is widely available, especially in North Texas.”
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Dallas-based Hunt Perovskite Technologies, part of Hunt Consolidated Inc, is one of the 22 selected for a new program from the DOE dedicated to making perovskite photovoltaic devices commercially available. If validated, the tech could make solar cells more efficient at a lower cost—but first, the projects have to overcome the issue of it being too unstable to commercially use.