Quote:
Originally Posted by DrkBlue
Where I live electricity prices have been declining - in real dollars, pre-inflation. We also run on 100% renewable energy nearly all the time. That story is increasing accurate for most of the US, at least nearly everywhere that is politically red or purple. The only significant outlier in the US is Nebraska, which has a government-owned statewide grid - they are paying more and are very late to the wind/solar investment.
That is not meant as a political statement as much as an observation - Texas, Midwest, Rockies have all had flat or declining electricity costs while seeing an increasingly greened grid. California and the Northeast see increasing costs but really no greener electricity sourcing.
Noting the Rhode Island location, the villain is mostly New York State. Gov. Cuomo has been holding his New England neighbors hostage. No new electric lines and no gas pipelines (necessary as a backup power source to renewables).
As noted, the ability to integrate a large number of home-based vehicle chargers is not good either. Without market forces that incentivize re-engineering the grid to support new loads in new places, there will be pinch points and some places at the end of the line, such as Rhode Island, that will be big losers.
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This is true. Right now there's a lot of money going into solar/wind/hydrogen and a lot of money flowing out of more traditional methods (just look at Exxon). I think that long term people will force-legislate "green" energy to happen, and while there will probably be price fluctuations, energy supply issues etc, eventually the market will figure out how to deal with it.
I love my internal combustion engine, and will always have one in the garage, but I think the younger generation of voters will literally push out oil/coal over time through politics. We'll all have fun being "green" while huge areas are strip-mined for lithium lol.
