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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday January 22 2017, @12:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the campaign-finance dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday January 22 2017, @11:51PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Sunday January 22 2017, @11:51PM (#457477) Journal

    > Reading TFA, one finds that the state will fine the supplier $10/megawatt hr not in compliance with the "standards".

    That is in the summary, where I mentioned "a $10/MWh penalty"; MWh is an abbreviation for megawatt-hour.

    > Alright, so the state DOES PERMIT the utilities to purchase solar and/or wind energy.

    I said that in the summary when I wrote "The latter [net metering] would encompass houses (and businesses?) with solar, wind or co-generation equipment."

    > The implication then, seems to be that the utilities may not produce their own solar or wind power?

    I wrote that utilities "could face a $10/MWh penalty"; the word "could" summarises the bill's provision for the penalty to be waived so long as utilities got at least 95% of their energy from "eligible resources," as mentioned in the CSM quote. Utilities aren't forbidden from having their own wind or solar facilities, but would be fined when those plants provided more than 5% of the power.

    Net metering allows residential and commercial customers who generate their own electricity from solar power to feed electricity they do not use back into the grid.

    What it means is that customers of the electric utility are billed for the total amount of electricity they use during a billing period, minus the amount they generate, without regard to the time of use or generation.

    It may be contrasted with time-of-use metering, in which the price of electricity fluctuates, perhaps on a fixed schedule.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering [wikipedia.org]

    I made it clear that small generators would not face the penalty, which I think was enough explanation. I did assume that readers would know what net metering is, but it's not crucial to the story.

    We've had other stories that are about net metering, specifically about efforts (at the state level) around the United States to curtail it:

    /article.pl?sid=14/04/28/2143238 [soylentnews.org]
    /article.pl?sid=16/04/29/0240242 [soylentnews.org]

    Those efforts continue:

    https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0&q=%22net+metering%22 [google.com]

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @10:25AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @10:25AM (#457585)

    Even though the link text shows that, when you hover over the link, you'll notice that the quote marks has been stripped from the URL.

    If you include a %2B or a | or a " in a URL, that will be altered in a way you will not appreciate.
    IOW, the S/N comments engine remains broken.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]