Reason #76: Why I Love To Blog -- "They" Are Reading The Blog -- April 8, 2019

Four days ago, a "road-to-California" post consisted of one EIA graphic. That was it.

The graphic reminded all of us: a picture is worth a thousand words.

Apparently someone saw that graphic and decided it was worth a thousand words.

From the Center of the American Experiment, no state imports more electricity than California.

Now that I see the story here, and that headline, I realize that we need to do a "per capita" analysis.

Here's the graphic again:

The linked American Center article has another graphic, source / origin of California's electricity.

The narrative says wind is represented by "light blue" in the graphic above. I could not find "light blue" unless it is the very small amount sitting between hydroelectricity and natural gas. 

I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but let's check per capita for a few states (electricity in million megawatthours per year):

• California, population, 40 million; imports 75 -- 1.875 million mwh/year per capita
• Virginia, population, 8.5 million; imports 35 -- 4.1 million mwh/year per capita
• Ohio, population, 11.7 million; imports 32 --  2.7 ditto
• Maryland, population, 6 million;  imports 30 -- 5 ditto
• Tennessee, population, 6.8 million; imports 28 -- 4.1 ditto

So, it is what it is.

One major difference among the states listed, I suppose, is that of the five states, California is the one best able to be self-sufficient in energy production if it chose to be. One wonders if the bigger story might not be the eastern states (Maryland, Ohio, Virginia) that are really, really dependent on outside energy.

But, in the big scheme of things, does it really matter? 

Much more could be said but I will leave it at that.

Note: I did not double-check any of the figures. I often make simple arithmetic errors.