Reason #24,560 Why I Love To Blog -- The Real Cost Of Electricity -- November 30, 2014

A few days ago a reader provided a great link and some really good research on the real cost of electricity, as provided by the provincial government of Ontario, Canada. That source is about as un-impeachable a source as one can find. If you can't believe a provincial government, whom can you trust?  So, before reading further, go back and look at at that post.

Now, Forbes is getting in on the act. Here's the link.

The concern is that the Obama administration is now trying to re-define how we determine the cost of electricity:

In the most recent Annual Energy Outlook, the EIA began using the “levelized avoided cost of energy” (LACE) as an alternative to the LCOE for assessing the economic competitiveness of different generating technologies. The LACE metric estimates what it would have cost the grid to generate the electricity otherwise displaced by a new generation project. (wow, sort that one out)

The LCOE is like a bad line of code in a software program used to develop other software programs. It has dangerously skewed investors’ understanding of the economics of generating electricity from renewable energy resources. It has also had perverse and difficult to undo impacts on local, state and federal energy policies.

This Forbes story would have made less sense to me had another reader not sent me the Ontario, Canada, study. And that's why I love to blog. 

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A Note To The Granddaughters

One of the most fascinating books I have ever read is Brenda James' The Truth Will Out: Unmasking The Real Shakespeare, c. 2005.

It is nice to have google at my side to help me cross-reference some of the data points Brenda James provides. Her book is absolutely fascinating.

In my freshman year at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, my courses were pretty much all required courses, to get them out of the way. One of the courses was western literature; the professor was perhaps one of the most interesting, most striking professors I ever had in college. I hardly recognize him in this picture taken way too late in his life. He was tall, and had the most striking red hair of anyone I can recall: perhaps a descendent of Eric the Red.

I assume we studied Shakespeare for about two months during that freshman year but I recall nothing else about his class. The only think I recall was studying Shakespeare. Dr Huseboe was incredibly animated and obviously very, very passionate about the dramatist and poet. I remember, very well, the paper I wrote for that subject; it was definitely out of the ordinary, which Dr Huseboe recognized, and, I suppose, appreciated, after reading scores of papers with the same theme. It was a mediocre paper at best, but the thesis at least was different.

My Shakespeare library is extensive, but if I had to narrow it down -- to share with the granddaughters -- it would be several of his plays; one or two books on Shakespeare by Harold Bloom; W H Auden's lectures on Shakespeare; and, Brenda James' book.