Renewable Energy As Percentage Of Overall Energy Provider Declines In July, 2018

I missed this when it was released September 26, 2018, by the EIA: the "Electric Power Monthly."

I've never paid attention to it; I'm not sure I've even seen it before. Whatever.

It's too much for me to go through on an early Sunday morning when I'm enjoying sunrise over beautiful Flathead Lake, west of Glacier Park, Montana. So I will rely on the summary over at oilprice which I have not fact-checked.

If the data is correct as reported it, is very, very interesting.

The first thing that jumped out at me: the natural gas story that will unfold this winter, if it's a cold winter. The historic data suggests that natural gas will be the energy story this winter (2018 - 2019) but now the National Association of Natural Gas Producers (or whatever the name is) suggests there will be no problem getting enough natural gas to New England and the northeast corridor this winter.

The writer reports the month-over-month change. It would have been better to see the July, 2018, data vs the July, 2017, data rather than the 2018 July vs June, 2018 data. Nonetheless, the report is an eye-opener on many, many levels. 

This will be re-posted.

From the linked "Electric Power Monthly":

• the most recent data lags two months; the most recent data is for July, 2018
• total amount of electricity generated in July, 2018, was the second highest amount generated for any single month since January, 2013 -- this is worthy of re-posting
• US electricity generation in US: almost 70% generated by coal and natural gas
• coal-based electricity in the US in July, 2018: increased month-over-month, almost by one percentage point
• natural gas-based electricity in the US in July, 2018: increased by slightly more than five percentage points
• natural gas-based electricity reached an unprecedented 40+%; up from 35% the previous month (year-over-year would be a better comparison)
• nuclear power:
• generated a bit more on a percentage basis month-over-month, but
• due to increase in total generation, the percentage of electricity provided by nuclear energy actually decreased -- from almost 19% in June, 2018, to about 18% in July
• renewable energy, July 2018: 
• All renewables: contribution from All Renewables at 13.01 percent fell further below that from Nuclear at 17.67 percent, similar to July 2017 when the ramp up of total generation resulted in the percentage contribution from All Renewables falling further below that from Nuclear
• Solar: the absolute contribution from Solar declined from it’s all time high in June (2018) of 10,880 GWh to 10,049 GWh, with the corresponding percentage contribution declining to 2.45 percent as opposed to 2.93 percent in June
• Wind: he amount of electricity generated by Wind decreased by almost 35 percent, from 24,411 GWh to 15,897 GWh and coupled with the increased total generation, the percentage contribution declined from 6.58 percent to 3.88 percent in July;
• Hydro: the contribution from Hydro decreased 13.53 percent from 27415 GWh in June to 23706 GWh, resulting in the percentage contribution decreasing from 7.39 percent in June to 5.78 percent.  
• Combined wind and solar: The combined contribution from Wind and Solar decreased to 6.33 percent from 9.51 percent in June. 
• Combined non-hydro-renewable energy: Consequently the contribution from Non-Hydro Renewables also decreased to 7.23 percent from 10.48 percent. 
• All zero-emission energy, including nuclear: The contribution of zero emission and carbon neutral sources, that is, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, landfill gas and other biomass decreased to 30.68 percent from 36.64 percent in June.