The Platte River Power Authority supplies Northern Colorado with their electricity and operates a giant wind farm west of Cheyenne. Almost sixty percent of their electricity is coming from coal this morning, and they say they will eliminate carbon by 2030.
“Platte River Power Authority is committed to working toward achieving a 100% noncarbon energy mix by 2030 while maintaining delivery of reliable, environmentally responsible and financially sustainable energy and services to its owner communities.”
The “incredible transition” is literally incredible. Here’s an example of how it works here in Michigan: Last Fall, Michigan’s biggest utility, Consumers Energy, announced that they were closing two generating units at the coal-fired Karn power plant near Bay City, and installing some solar panels. Here are some stories about it:
https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2023/10/utility-scale-solar-field-to-replace-consumers-energys-old-coal-units.html
https://www.wnem.com/2023/10/04/consumers-energy-solar-array-project-replace-former-karn-coal-plants/
The news stories all say that Consumers Energy will “replace” coal with solar. But The Karn coal units 1+2 had combined installed capacity of 544 MW. Coal capacity factor in the US is typically over 50%. The actual output of the Karn units 1+2 over the last 60+ years has averaged greater than 270 MW. Meanwile, Consumers Energy will install 85 MW of solar PV capacity at the site of the Karn 1+2 units. Utility-scale PV solar has a capacity factor of less than 20% in Michigan. So the new solar farm will have an actual output of less than 17 MW. How does 277 MW of coal-fired output? It doesn’t. But Consumers Energy wants us to think it does, and the news media is eager to report that. We must all believe in the “incredible transition,” even though the numbers just don’t add up.
Correction: How does less than 17 MW of solar power output “replace” more than 277 MW of coal-fired output? It doesn’t.
Those existing windmills and future solar panels would be a hideous blight on the landscape! Yet they’ll need far more to get their pointless and elusive goal. Except they won’t. I see they purchase a big chunk of power off the grid. That’s not known to be cheap and it’s source may not be “green”.
“100% noncarbon energy mix by 2030”
In 6 years !! They could achieve that next week …
just cut 60% of production & sell what’s left to the highest bidder via smart meters.
Now let’s watch a video of dozens of bird choppers getting destroyed by the tornado in Greenfield, Iowa two days ago. Wind farm reduced to rubbish.