Renewable energy rent-seekers often tout Germany as a paradise of renewable energy integration, but Germany is no role model that Minnesota should follow. Unless of course, it's following Germany's lead in keeping Minnesota's coal plants open for another 19 years....
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The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently released its electricity data for Minnesota in 2017, and boy, were there some interesting findings. One of those interesting findings is that contrary to the popular narrative that by building wind turbines, we will make Minnesota less dependent upon coal-burning power plants. The graph below shows the annualized capacity factor for each generation source in 2017. I've used this graph in recent blog posts but this merits its own 15 minutes of fame in this post. The capacity factor for coal was 61 percent, much larger than the capacity factor for wind at 35.9 percent,...
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61 percent of the declines in CO2 emissions have been achieved by switching from burning coal (which emits about twice as much CO2 as burning natural gas) for far less cost than wind and solar....
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Despite being the beneficiaries of billions of dollars in subsidies, wind and solar compose just a tiny fraction of overall energy use in the United States. The pie chart below is from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and it shows that oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power provide far more of our energy than wind and solar, which together account for about 3 percent of our total energy consumption....
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The Star Tribune recently ran an article called "Complicated economics of community solar gardens subject of debate." Seeing how the Strib did not seek our opinion on the topic for their article, I'm providing it below. First and foremost, Minnesota's Community Solar installations are a mess. These solar installations are small, inefficient, and expensive. According to the article in the Star Tribune, Xcel Energy currently purchases power from the solar gardens at a price of 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour, which is 4.3 times more expensive than the electricity generated at the Sherburne County (Sherco) coal-fired power plant in 2016. Cost data for...
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Generating electricity with natural gas is far more expensive than generating electricity with coal at current gas prices. In fact, natural gas prices must remain below $2.92/mmbtu at a combined cycle natural gas plant, and below $2.24 at combustion turbine plants for consumers to save money on fuel costs relative to coal....
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In its most recent annual securities and exchanges report to investors, Xcel admitted exactly what American Experiment has been saying for years – that renewable energy sources increase electricity rates, create energy grids with excess and idle capacity, and lead to a more unreliable energy system. ...
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It's a common refrain for energy policy: it is cheaper to generate electricity from natural gas than coal. In some respects this is true, but power plant efficiency and fuel prices are important variables we should consider before we completely shutter Minnesota's coal fleet in favor of renewables and natural gas. Combined cycle natural gas plants are more efficient than coal plants because they use the heat produced as gas is burned to make 50 percent more electricity. It's hard to explain, so I've included a video below. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ4yp_0Djvc#action=share[/embed] However, not all natural gas plants are combined cycle plants, and many of the...
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Fracking shows what a technological disruption in the energy truly looks like, a rapid adoption of new technology that lowers prices for consumers regardless of the hurdles placed in front of it by governments and attempts to squash it by vested players in established industries like OPEC. Fracking also shows us what technological disruptions don't look like, and wind and solar fit this bill. Despite decades of subsidies and tens of billions of squandered taxpayer dollars, and state laws requiring their use, these sources of energy simply cannot compete in terms of reliability or affordability of fossil fuels. ...
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Access to electricity has increased dramatically in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is incredibly good news, because more than 600 million people, nearly double the population of the United States, still live with no electricity. In what should be a surprise to absolutely no one, the vast majority of this electricity was provided by fossil fuels and hydro electric power, and this is exactly how it should be....
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