Electricity Rates May Be Going Up For Good; So, How's That Renewable Energy Working Out?

I posted this story earlier, without the link. It was the top story in the Los Angeles Times today. The story is now going viral as they say. Here it is, being re-reported in Chicago Tribune. For all I know this is where it was originally published. Machts nichts. The mainstream press is reporting:

As temperatures plunged to 16 below zero in Chicago in early January and set record lows across the eastern U.S., electrical system managers implored the public to turn off stoves, dryers and even lights or risk blackouts.

A fifth of all power-generating capacity in a grid serving 60 million people went suddenly offline, as coal piles froze, sensitive electrical equipment went haywire and utility operators had trouble finding enough natural gas to keep power plants running.

The wholesale price of electricity skyrocketed to nearly $2 per kilowatt hour, more than 40 times the normal rate. The price hikes cascaded quickly down to consumers. Robert Thompson, who lives in the suburbs of Allentown, PA, got a $1,250 bill for January.

The bill was reduced to about $750 after Thompson complained, but Susan Martucci, a part-time administrative assistant in Allentown, got no relief on her $654 charge. "It was ridiculous," she said.

The electrical system's duress was a direct result of the polar vortex, the cold air mass that settled over the nation. But it exposed a more fundamental problem. There is a growing fragility in the U.S. electricity system, experts warn, the result of the shutdown of coal-fired plants, reductions in nuclear power, a shift to more expensive renewable energy and natural gas pipeline constraints. The result is likely to be future price shocks. And they may not be temporary.

One recent study predicts the cost of electricity in California alone could jump 47% over the next 16 years, in part because of the state's shift toward more expensive renewable energy.

"Consumers switch to renewable energy." And there it is, in black-and-white: all those naysayers who keep telling us wind is free and solar is free and even if they aren't, they are less expensive than fossil fuels, and even if it won't make a difference because China is building a new coal-fired plant, on average, every day, if it makes us feel good, we should switch to solar.   

But if you don't mind $1,200-monthly utility bills, renewable energy will be just fine. If nothing else, it will make you feel good.

Seriously, I find it interesting the mainstream media is starting to report what regular readers knew all along.

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Global Warming Climate Change Extreme Weather Global Cooling IceAgeNow  Whatever

Russian Urals experiencing worst spring snowstorm in 123 years.