Minnesota Utilty Costs To Increase In 2020 Due To Renewable Energy Costs -- Xcel Minnesota -- January 9, 2020

Anyone paying attention knows what is going on here.

If I was asked to name the one US public utility company that is the face of the renewable energy scam, I would say it was .... drum roll ... Xcel Minnesota.

So, when Don sent me this headline --

... Don also read between the lines ...

... renewable energy is way too costly for customers and there's not enough capacity anyway ..

The headline:

Xcel Minnesota: burning coal seasonally will save customers millions, reduce emissions.

Link here.

Xcel Energy Minnesota wants to burn some of its coal under economic and seasonal dispatch instead of through self-scheduling practices, it told state regulators in December.

The utility submitted a filing with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to begin offering its two remaining coal plants seasonally into the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), rather than self-committing the plants to the market, which leads to market distortions, according to research from the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The move is part of an ongoing proceeding opened by state regulators in November, and several clean energy groups in the state have been pressing the utility to consider moving away from self-scheduling.

The measures are estimated to reduce customer costs by tens of millions of dollars and 5 million tons of carbon emissions annually by optimizing use of the plants. Minnesota's PUC was the first state commission in the country to open up a docket on this issue, according to UCS Senior Energy Analyst Joe Daniel, whose research implies the market distorting effects of self-scheduling are widespread across regional power markets. 

We'll have to google "self-scheduling" vs "seasonal dispatch" later.

Fifty dollars a year is peanuts ----- except the solar/wind folks told us renewable energy was free and utility costs would go down. Not only are utility costs not going down, they will increase in 2020, according to Xcel Energy.

There are so many story lines here; if I had the time ... but I don't.

But anyone who tells me wind/solar is less expensive than $2-nat gas is full of malarkey -- as Joe would say. 

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EIA Natural Gas Report

Link here.

• prior: - 58 bcf
• most recent: - 44 bcf

Also here.