Texas loses to Oklahoma on electric vehicle company Canoo’s factory: Power grid cited as factor

[essentialsaltes]

North Texas was “definitely in the race” in the multistate competition for the new assembly plant, but Texas energy infrastructure issues and other factors led the company to choose Oklahoma, chairman and CEO Tony Aquila told The Dallas Morning News.

The announcement was made at Canoo’s first-ever investor day at Texas Motor Speedway, and it came with residents of the state on high alert for potential power blackouts.

The state of Oklahoma and Canoo agreed to an incentive package worth as much as $400 million if the company meets staffing and wage goals

Referred to by Canoo as a “mega-factory,” the assembly plant is expected to support 2,000 high-paying jobs and is to be complete by 2023.

 

[TLK Valentine]

Seems logical -- you want to build electric vehicles in a location that believes in electricity...

 

[Sophrosyne]

I heard this on the News here. The plant is supposed to be near Pryor. Google set up a server farm I believe in that part of the state also. One reason might be that we have Grand River Dam which is a hydroelectric generating plant near there. During the Texas outage the power here didn't even blink at all here and it was colder than in all but northern Texas (panhandle) I would guess.

Oklahoma was in the running for Elon's plant awhile back too, I think we were in the finals maybe runner up to Texas so it isn't totally shocking that we got the Canoo plant.

 

[TLK Valentine]

I heard this on the News here. The plant is supposed to be near Pryor. Google set up a server farm I believe in that part of the state also. One reason might be that we have Grand River Dam which is a hydroelectric generating plant near there. During the Texas outage the power here didn't even blink at all here and it was colder than in all but northern Texas (panhandle) I would guess.

Oklahoma gets its electricity from the Eastern Interconnected Power Grid -- Texas' failure wouldn't have affected it in the least.

 

[Sophrosyne]

Oklahoma gets its electricity from the Eastern Interconnected Power Grid -- Texas' failure wouldn't have affected it in the least.

Actually Oklahoma produces most of its own power in state we get pretty much very little or nothing from the power grid normally. We get most of our power from natural gas and imported coal and also have hydroelectric power and in the panhandle we have wind power too. We aren't much dependent on the grid here and we also have 5 refineries in the state so our gas prices are lower on average than most states.

 

[TLK Valentine]

Actually Oklahoma produces most of its own power in state we get pretty much very little or nothing from the power grid normally. We get most of our power from natural gas and imported coal and also have hydroelectric power and in the panhandle we have wind power too. We aren't much dependent on the grid here and we also have 5 refineries in the state so our gas prices are lower on average than most states.

Which is great to hear -- but being connected to the grid means that if something should happen (blizzard, for example), Oklahoma can always borrow a few megawatts from, say, Kansas or Arkansas to keep the lights on and the people from freezing.

Texas chose not to do that, and ended up with a system which couldn't handle a blizzard... and can barely handle summer.

 

[Sophrosyne]

Luckily when it got very cold most people have natural gas heaters so our grid wasn't taxed nearly as much as where most use electric heating. We produce a lot of natural gas here in the state. We were the 4th largest producer of natural gas and the 4th largest producer of crude oil of the states.

 

[trunks2k]

Luckily when it got very cold most people have natural gas heaters so our grid wasn't taxed nearly as much as where most use electric heating.

IIRC, most people in TX also had gas heat, but a big problem was that the failure to properly winterize meant the means of pumping gas (especially to power plants) stopped. So it wasn't so much "a bunch of people started heating their homes, overloading the system" it was more "the power plants just stopped working".

 

[Sophrosyne]

IIRC, most people in TX also had gas heat, but a big problem was that the failure to properly winterize meant the means of pumping gas (especially to power plants) stopped. So it wasn't so much "a bunch of people started heating their homes, overloading the system" it was more "the power plants just stopped working".

Yes, I forgot about that also. Our climate gets colder than it does, we have had temps well below zero before for days so we were not caught off guard and it did get colder than it did there we had temps 18 below zero here.