LOCATION/TYPE

NEWS HOME

[ exact phrase in "" • results by date ]

[ Google-powered • results by relevance ]



Archive
RSS

Add NWW headlines to your site (click here)

Get weekly updates

WHAT TO DO
when your community is targeted

RSS

RSS feeds and more

Keep Wind Watch online and independent!

Donate via Paypal

Donate via Stripe

Selected Documents

All Documents

Research Links

Alerts

Press Releases

FAQs

Campaign Material

Photos & Graphics

Videos

Allied Groups

Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005.

News Watch Home

A cautionary energy tale from California 

Credit:  By the editorial page staff of The Free Lance-Star | Aug 29, 2020 | fredericksburg.com ~~

If you’ve oticed that your electricity bills have slowly creeped up over the past decade or so, you’re not imagining things. According to the Virginia State Corporation Commission, energy legislation passed by the General Assembly have increased Dominion Energy customers’ power bills nearly 29 percent since 2007.

When the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown imposed by Gov. Ralph Northam caused hundreds of thousands of Virginians to lose their jobs, the SCC imposed a moratorium on utility shutoffs, which was to have expired on Monday. The moratorium was extended to Sept. 16 to give the General Assembly, now meeting in special session, a bit more time to pass emergency legislation to help people who lost their livelihoods keep the lights on, at least temporarily.

The monopoly utility’s average profits over the last three years exceeded its guaranteed 9.2 percent rate of return by $502.7 million, according to the SCC, so there’s no danger of Dominion going broke over the next two weeks.

Longer term, electricity bills are set to rise another 45 percent over the next decade due to Dominion’s ambitious multi-billion-dollar plans, approved by the legislature, to close more coal and natural gas power plants and expand its solar and wind portfolio.

According to the SCC’s annual report, the average residential customer’s electric bill for 1,000 kilowatt hours of power was $90.57 a month in 2007. It’s $116.69 now, and will increase to more than $168 a month by 2030.

What will Virginians get for such a steep hike in their monthly electric bill? Less reliable power when they need it most.

This is no longer a theoretical argument. There’s a real-world example in California, where highly subsidized solar and wind farms replaced natural gas plants and hydroelectric dams.

The Golden State, home of Silicon Valley and its power-guzzling tech companies, had to institute a rolling blackout for hundreds of thousands of state residents this month—right in the middle of a triple-digit heat wave—because it didn’t have enough juice in its cannibalized power generation system to meet peak demand. And the state’s previous reliance on “backup” electricity from other states, which have also been closing their fossil fuel plants, failed to make up the difference.

Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a strong advocate for the state equivalent of the Green New Deal, now admits that “we failed to predict and plan [for] these shortages, and that’s simply unacceptable.”

Although Newsom publicly emphasized that California remains “committed to radically changing the way we produce and consume energy,” state energy officials are now considering delaying the planned retirement of four natural gas-fired power plants that were supposed to be replaced by renewable energy sources, and extending the life of Diablo Canyon, California’s only operating nuclear power plant, which is set to close in 2025.

“We cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition,” Newsom told reporters at a press conference in Sacramento.

Neither can Virginia. When Dominion and its partner, Duke Energy, canceled the Atlantic Coast Pipeline Project after years of litigation due to ongoing “legal uncertainty,” the CEOs of both utilities warned that “until these issues are resolved, the ability to satisfy the country’s energy needs will be significantly challenged.”

By next year, capacity restraints on existing East Coast pipelines could start affecting utilities’ ability to generate sufficient power to meet increasing demand.

Three years ago, Californians—who pay 50 percent more for electricity than the national average—were told that because the state had a “glut of power,” it didn’t need any new traditional power plants.

This month, they found themselves sitting in the dark in 100-plus degree heat under a rolling blackout because their state officials and the experts they relied upon were spectacularly wrong.

Virginia should not make the same mistake.

Source:  By the editorial page staff of The Free Lance-Star | Aug 29, 2020 | fredericksburg.com

This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.

Wind Watch relies entirely
on User Funding
   Donate via Paypal
(via Paypal)
Donate via Stripe
(via Stripe)

Share:

e-mail X FB LI TG TG Share


News Watch Home

Get the Facts
CONTACT DONATE PRIVACY ABOUT SEARCH
© National Wind Watch, Inc.
Use of copyrighted material adheres to Fair Use.
"Wind Watch" is a registered trademark.

 Follow:

Wind Watch on X Wind Watch on Facebook

Wind Watch on Linked In Wind Watch on Mastodon