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The Christian Science Monitor reports on legislation proposed by Republican law-makers in Wyoming:
The bill would require utilities to use "eligible resources" to meet 95 percent of Wyoming's electricity needs in 2018, and all of its electricity needs in 2019.
Those "eligible resources" are defined solely as coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, oil, and individual net metering.
The latter would encompass houses (and businesses?) with solar, wind or co-generation equipment. Utility-scale generation, however, could face a $10/MWh penalty.
The article notes that
Wyoming is the nation's largest coal producer [...] nearly 90 percent of the electricity generated in Wyoming came from coal in September 2016, the most recent month with available data.
A PDF of the bill, SF0071, is available on the Wyoming legislature's Web site.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 22 2017, @01:19PM
Support American capitalism, buy a legislator!
Can we please get back to actual capitalism where competition rules instead of crony-capitalism (which is not capitalism but looks like it to progressives) where "pull" rules?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:45PM
So you admit that the Warsaw Block and the PRC never had anything to do with either Communism or Socialism?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:02PM
No, I admit that you went way, way, way off of what I said to try and make a partisan point and still failed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:14PM
No true Scotsman, eh.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 23 2017, @06:55PM
Newp, sliding scale of corruption with a bright line that marks where corruption has officially gone too far. Small amounts an economy can shrug off, when it's the norm is where the problem is.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:06PM
Gonna have to agree with TMB, his short post had nothing to do with communism. The reply was... odd. What on earth was the point supposed to be?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday January 22 2017, @02:50PM
I do find it interesting that they're passing stuff like this, though. It's an acknowledgement that the fossil fuel industry knows that wind and solar are going to be cheaper than fossil fuels soon, if they aren't already.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:23PM
Here are windmaps of the USA at different elevations. [nrel.gov]
Wyoming has some of the best wind in the country. Not the absolute best, that's mostly next door in the dakotas/nebraska/kansas corridor, but a close second.
Wyoming is on a different regional grid. [nerc.com] And on their grid they are tops.
The most efficient new wind turbine installations are producing electricity at 2.5cents/kwh [renewableenergyworld.com] which is by far the cheapest current source of electricity. And it is only going to get cheaper while coal is unlikely to get any cheaper.
Still, demand for power is relatively flat. That means new wind installs are competing against already-paid-for coal plants. Wind installs are going to need to get substantially cheaper in order to actually cause coal plants to be decommissioned before their design lifetimes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @07:55PM
Excellent resource.
That gives a dramatic illustration of the point. JPG 622 KB [nrel.gov]
There are no lavender-, purple-, or plum-colored spots on the map.
It jumps from red all the way to blue--and the ONLY blue bits on the map are in southeast Wyoming.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @08:31PM
30m height map isn't as applicable. The 100m maps are closer to the mark as the newer, more efficient turbines have very long blades and they are only getting longer. The tallest turbine in the us (as of now) has a hub-height of 115m. [desmoinesregister.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by choose another one on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:10PM
Wind and solar PV are already cheaper, _but_ they cannot do base load or on-demand. A true capitalist solution would be based on paying spot-price to those who can only supply power at uncertain times, or fixed price to those who can meet an SLA to supply power a significant % of the time or as required. Such solutions don't go down well with renewable advocates however, because typically the spot price is low (or even -ve happens over this side of the atlantic) when the sun shines and the wind blows, and high when they don't - which would make wind and solar PV uneconomic after all.
In the UK we "resolve" this by paying renewable generators to shut down when there is too much power, and paying for multiple GW (and increasing rapidly) of backup diesel generators when there is too little - neither capitalist nor environment friendly. A capitalist solution would favour base-load and on demand generators when the spot price is highly variable, which would thus act to reduce the variability, instead we subsidise renewables with guaranteed buying contracts when they cannot produce power on demand, thus increasing variability.
The Wyoming bill doesn't sound any closer to capitalism though - because it specifies means of generation instead of specifying the characteristics of the means of generation. Solar thermal with molten salt, for example, can store power for long enough to come close to being a base load generator, and as battery tech improves the same may apply to solar PV and wind.
TL;DR: solar and wind will actually be cheaper when they are economic if paid spot price and/or when they can store their own output to provide base load / on demand power - otherwise you have to account for the cost of storing power somewhere else. Integrated renewable-battery generation is coming, but it ain't there yet, not at lower cost than fossil fuel.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:25PM
Another approach to the base-load problem is increasing the (geographic) grid-size. The larger the grid, the more likely there will be an available source of intermittent power somewhere on the grid.
Grid size increases will not be sufficient to handle all cases, but they can can make a big dent in the need for storage capacity.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:12PM
This is true, but unless the wind or solar-PV generator happens to own a grid and can take advantage of the scale, then they are still stuck being paid spot price, and the grid owner can spread the risk of failing to have enough power to meet demand across a larger geographic area.
The trouble is, in winter, a persistent High-pressure system can stay for days covering a large portion of the continental USA, or Europe, delivering low wind speeds couple with low temperatures. You need the back-up power available.
Both wind and solar-PV business cases would be enhanced by suitable grid-level storage options. They don't exist, as yet, although there are many ideas. There is a limit to the amount of pumped-hydro you can build, and it is pretty ecologically damaging, and grid-level battery storage isn't quite there yet. There are plenty of other ideas: compressing air; melting salt and using the stored heat to drive steam turbines later; electrolysing water to make hydrogen and oxygen which is stored and reburned to generate power later - but none have made the transition to full-scale commercial reality suitable for general use by utilities yet. I've even seen a proposal using Zinc-air batteries. The ones to watch are the technologies that are being commercially successful in 'peak-shaving' implementations and which therefore have the possibility of being worked up into full-grid-backup solutions. Peak-shaving is where the money is at the moment, and expensive solutions can pay off: the problem is getting the costs down far-enough to provide full backup.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday January 23 2017, @01:29AM
> I've even seen a proposal using Zinc-air batteries.
Someone has written about it in Wikipedia:
The Eos Energy System battery is about half the size of a shipping container and provides 1 MWh of storage. Con Edison, National Grid, Enel and GDF SUEZ began testing the battery for grid storage. Con Edison and City University of New York are testing a zinc-based battery from Urban Electric Power as part of a New York State Energy Research and Development Authority program. Eos projects that the cost of storing electricity with such EOS batteries is US$160/kwh and that it will provide electricity cheaper than a new natural-gas peaking power station. Other battery technologies range from $400 to about $1,000 a kilowatt-hour.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc-air_batteries#Grid_storage [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @10:10AM
If we can get cost and efficiency of energy storage and distribution cheap enough, then creating regional energy markets similar to the currency or stock markets may make sense. Let the usual market forces reach a stable equilibrium.
Example:
During times of high winds and sun, available power rises, so the price drops. This is what energy storage providers are waiting for, who buy up the power at a low price, with the intention to sell high later. Basically similar to the day traders and other middlemen in finance. This creates demand for the extra power, preventing the price from dropping all the way to zero, and also gives this extra power someplace to go. This allows variable renewable to still make some money during periods of oversupply.
When the wind is calm and the sun is down, available power drops, so price rises and energy storage providers start to sell, making up the shortfall.
Markets can do strange things though, and energy utilities need to be reliable. You don't want blackouts or brownouts due to some market glitch, so I imagine you need a lot of constraints/regulations determining how much an an entity can/should buy or sell at a time.
Also shifting around all this power is more complex and expensive than just changing some numbers in some databases. There would be quite a large amount of overcapacity and wasted power. This is not a problem if all power is clean power from renewables, but can be problematic while fossil fuels are still being used.
Anyone else can chime in with their thoughts on this idea? I might have missed some glaring problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @10:25AM
Capitalist solution would be to give birth to energy bankers business: entrepreneurs who invest in building energy storage facilities, and profit of buying renewable energy when it is plentiful and cheap, then selling it back when renewables are off line and energy price soars. Technology? Whatever works best for them, for the money they have available to put into it: reversible hydro, flywheels, electrolysis/fuel cells, batteries, ...
It is so simple, practically a no-brainer.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:57PM
Yup and that's a good thing even if you're "rah rah oil". Means we get cheap(er) power here and sell the expensive power overseas.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday January 22 2017, @11:44PM
I do find it interesting that they're passing stuff like this,
That you can find one whack-job legislator who submits a bill does NOT CONSTITUTE PASSING A LAW.
Crap bills occur in every state. And probably in every country. They don't get passed. They don't even make it out of committee.
A campaign promise is fulfilled and people move on. (Except nerd ragers).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bethany.Saint on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:03PM
WTF?! Crony-capitalism is a Republican ideology not a progressive one. Now we've got a right-wing-nut for a president, business executives in charge of all the cabinet positions, and a Republican party bought and paid for by crony-capitalism. The newly created corporatocracy is a Republican wet dream.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 22 2017, @05:55PM
You misunderstood. I meant that progressives often can't, or have no interest in being able to, tell crony-capitalism from the real deal. Both sides engage in it quite a hell of a lot though; it is truly a non-partisan practice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @06:26PM
That is capitalism, but you've just got your blinders on, so of course it's impossible for you to see.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 23 2017, @06:54PM
No, sweety, that is what happens to capitalism if you don't hang corrupt officials by the neck until dead, dead, dead. It can be done properly, it just rarely is.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 22 2017, @07:43PM
He got you there. I can't think of anything more capitalist than buying legislation and legislators. Of course, now that the subject of regulatory capture has come up, you're going to say it's all the fault of those damn regulations, being all abusable like that, and we should stop regulating. But guns, of course, don't kill people; people do, and there is no analogy between those statements what-so-freaking-ever. Hmm...
Maybe stop and ask yourself: why do we, humans, engage in economic activity? Once you have the answer, you'll realize why putting the ideological purity of ANY system, ANYWHERE along the spectrum from utter laissez-faire to hard collectivism, is a moral failure, the moral equivalent of a massive priority inversion bug.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 23 2017, @06:52PM
Yet again you project what you think I am over top of mountains of evidence to the contrary. I am not anti-regulation. I simply think promoting competition is a better use of the law than hamstringing any company that does too well out of pure spite.
Like all these megacorp within the same market mergers? Fuuuuuck that noise. That is anti-competition and thus bad.
Phone/cable company Internet service duopolies? Limit rates based on areas where there is actual competition if there is no serious competition in a given area. Charge no tax on the revenue acquired in an area for the first three years of a company entering into that market as competition.
Capitalism does need a guiding hand but that hand belonging to a socialist/communist/progressive is as bad as it belonging to a corrupt official.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 23 2017, @11:02PM
Then get your useless beer-swilling drunk-shooting lazy-fishing ass out there and make some change happen.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 24 2017, @02:10AM
Pass. I think in logic not in feelz. Almost nobody votes on logic; even around these parts where we highly value a good bit of it. It'd be like learning a foreign language that wouldn't even let me watch anime without subs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:09AM
Hah. El gringo piensa que no hablo otros idiomas. Soy desde el Bronx, cabrón; mi español es mejor que mi japonés. How many does your dumb ass speak? Hell, you sound like you barely have a grip on English, like most Americans.
And what a poor excuse not to go and fight for your supposed principles. I was right on the money from day one pegging you as a worthless, solipsistic coward. At least I have the courage to fight for mine, even if the cause seems hopeless. Gods, my balls are bigger than yours and they're ovaries!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 24 2017, @04:25AM
You forget, I don't actually want things to get better. I want them to keep getting worse until we can throw this corrupt POS government out and start fresh. It's why I voted for Obama twice and was not remotely disappointed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:11AM
I love you "burn it to the ground and start it all over!" types. You're either egomaniacs, driven by some delusion that you're some kind of temporarily-embarrassed scion of the rightfully-ruling elite, or else you're on a level with a suicide bomber packing enough explosive to kill over a billion people.
Either way, the self-centered, amoral nihilism is staggering.
If you're too weak and cowardly to fight, if you've got nothing to contribute, *kill yourself.* Lord knows you have enough big metal cock substitutes lying around. Chug a few beers first if your courage comes in liquid form. Me, I'm gonna fight, and I'm gonna *keep* fighting until I can't anymore. And then they better bury me under something heavy, and never, ever, ever turn their backs on it...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 24 2017, @11:15AM
I love it when you tell me what I want. Shows how astoundingly clueless you are. I want to fuck off fishing, sling a little bit of code, and continue having a quite happy life. Running shit is like the job absolutely farthest down my list of jobs I'd like to do. I'd enjoy the "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and patriots" bits more and getting shot at is never especially fun.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:11PM
Well, that's on you. Just remember that old saw about the hottest places in Hell being reserved for those who stayed uninvolved in a time of crisis. It's fine though; you admit you're a useless, cowardly oxygen thief, so at least there's no delusion on that score.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:01PM
See that is the problem with all the systems. We put our faith in "the system" taking care of the human problems that crop up, but we have to design systems that factor in the human ability to screw things up.
Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Whateverism, they all fail the human test. Greedy humans will try and subvert the system, we have to build in checks and balances to keep any one person/group from gaining too much power over others. The only clear answer I can come up with is to do away with the pyramid power structure. Redefine management as simply another business role. If you remember your high school group projects then management is the "facilitator" role, they shouldn't be judge jury and executioner. Separation of powers was the smartest move, now we need to reassess government roles and redefine their scope of power.
As for your insult of progressives, realize that conservatives are the opposite. They'll defend the idea of capitalism to their own detriment, looking up to people like Trump as some shining beacon of hope just because he made a lot of money. They also tear down positive systems meant to help people, believing various lies that "capitalists" tell them in an attempt to create new locked-in markets.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 23 2017, @06:41PM
Some of em. Can't really call it a conservative thing though; libertarians lurve it way more than conservatives do. I guess it's just less absolute when you're judging your own preferred system as opposed to one you irrationally despise.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:22PM
Maybe if we had an actual example where real deal capitalism didn't morph into crony-capitalism, we'd be able to tell the difference.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 23 2017, @06:37PM
Oh it always does. To what degree is the bit in question. It's quantum like that. One minute you don't have enough corruption to call it crony-capitalism, the next you do, with no middle ground in between.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 22 2017, @09:29PM
Crony-capitalism is a Republican ideology not a progressive one
Not accurate. Progressivism != Socialism
Your hypothesis is incorrect for anyone who is not actually Left of center (anti-Capitalism).
This excludes almost all USAians, who have gladly swallowed their indoctrination by Capitalists (a constant barrage of commercial ads) and their indoctrination by public schools which are obviously forbidden to speak well of Socialism or even to make honest comparisons between Capitalism and Socialism. [democracyatwork.info]
Broadcast in Frisco Bay Area and streamed live: Fridays 10AM Pacific time; 10.7MB webcasts archived for 2 weeks [kpfa.org]
Broadcast in the Los Angeles Area (112,000 watts!) and streamed live: Sundays 9AM Pacific time; no local archive [kpfk.org]
Also available via numerous other Pacifica Radio affiliates.
While The Blue Party may have been noticeably different at some time in the past (arguable), since The Blues chose George McGovern as their 1972 presidential candidate and were creamed, The Blues have shifted even more strongly toward the pro-business region of the political palate (and have become actively anti-Labor).
This is strongly demonstrated by the accomplishments of Slick Willie. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [truth-out.org]
The Blues are NOT anti-Crony-Capitalism ; the "best" that can be said about them is that they simply cater to a slightly different segment of the business community.
As economist and historian Thomas Piketty noted in his 696-page analysis of 250 years of Capitalism, that economic system leads to more and more concentrations of wealth (The 1 Percent) and concentrations of political power (Oligarchy --a bad imitation of Democracy, where the rich buy up the gov't).
If you want to get rid of the problem, you have to get rid of the Capitalist system.
The logical replacement is Socialism, which embodies distributed power and wealth, strong Democracy (with everyone getting a vote and all votes being equal)[1], and public ownership of natural monopolies (roads, bridges, water systems, electricity, natural gas, communications infrastructure, etc.).[2]
[1] This will obviously require publicly-funded elections.
[2] Just watch Trump do the OPPOSITE, selling off public assets to his cronies for pennies and granting contracts for e.g. building roads that will be privately-owned and will have tolls.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @04:12AM
You know, Gewg, *any* economic system can in theory promote human flourishing. Anything from hard collectivism to utter laissez-faire could in theory work, and work just as well. When these systems fail, it is because they fail to take human nature into account. We should focus on figuring out a system, and there may be more than one, that stops the concentration, the accelerating, self-reinforcing concentration, of wealth and resources and power into fewer and fewer hands.
Nothing in nature that remains stable has this sort of positive feedback; indeed, it's *negative* feedbacks, the dampeners on the oscillators, that hold a system more or less steady in the face of fluctuating inputs.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:36PM
*any* economic system can in theory promote human flourishing
As mentioned, Prof. Thomas Piketty has studied 250 years of Capitalism.
He has determined that a system whose ONLY goal is to maximize profits for The Ownership Class leads to cartels, monopoly, and a social situation that is less and less stable.
I will argue that the ultimate expression of Capitalism is Fascism.
OTOH, the (Socialist) Mondragon worker-owned cooperative (in continuous operation since 1956)--and, to a lesser extent, the town of Marinaleda, which has a Socialist mayor who has been continuously reelected since 1979--demonstrate that a system whose primary goal is social stability does well at achieving that.
In Italy, the effects of the Maracora law, enacted in 1985, which uses lump-sum unemployment payouts to kick-start worker-owned cooperatives, are similar as well.
It's clear to me that a choice has to be made at the start as to what the goal is.
If social stability is the goal, then having a single Worker-Owner Class is the way to achieve that.
I'm currently listening to Mitch Jeserich's "Letters and Politics" program on Pacifica.
The year 1898 was pivotal in USAian politics.
Overproduction by USAian farmers and industrialists was such that USA needed foreign markets to dump the stuff.
This led to the invasion and occupation of Hawaii and the Spanish-American War and yet another ratcheting up of USAian Imperialism/Colonialism/Mercantilism.
The boom and bust cycle inherent to Capitalism is unstable.
For a stable society, it must be avoided.
All systems are NOT equal.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 24 2017, @08:01PM
Well, yes, which is why I said *in theory.* In practice, where unregulated or badly-regulated capitalism runs into trouble is 1) dealing with goods and services for which demand is inelastic, like healthcare, and 2) when it gets its claws into government and the military and starts having wars waged for economic reasons.
You're pretty much entirely correct here, though given Dunbar's Number a.k.a. the Monkeysphere, I'm not sure the coop approach is scalable :/
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:14PM
The key, it appears, is that all ELECTIONS for public office MUST BE PUBLICLY FUNDED and that that element MUST be written into the founding document of the democracy with a clause that it is NOT AMENDABLE; if folks think that that needs to be changed, it must be done via a constitutional convention--with everything in the founding document up for grabs.
...otherwise, you end up with Oligarchy/Fascism.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:43PM
What's "scalable"?
Mondragon started with 6 guys; they now have 100,000 worker-owners.
Starting in 1985, the Maracora law has spawned 8100 co-ops in a single region in northern Italy (Emilia-Romagna).
...and even if a 100 percent conversion of companies isn't achieved, wouldn't it be great if folks had a -choice- of buying -much- of their stuff from a worker-owned/maximize-wellbeing/profits-stay-local operation as opposed to a maximize-profits/headquartered-in-another-place/exports-jobs corporation?
...and wouldn't the really giant stuff that isn't scalable be considered a natural monopoly which should be publicly owned?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]