I am attempting to come at this issue in a better way than my post from earlier this week, where I unintentionally made a "click bait" title that many people were upset about.
Here's the scenario: My Dad works at a coal plant in Iowa for MidAmerican Energy. On Thursday he came into work and the units were offline. This is incredibly unusual. He was told that it was due to surplus wind power and that the offline status would potentially last for months. They are still offline.
I think this is amazing, because for all my life it has seemed like renewable energy was the right way to go, but that use of these technologies may not materialize because of entrenched business and political interests.
But now, things are really changing.
I called last night and got an update. Evidently, there was enough surplus wind energy that the cost of energy was low enough that there was going to be a net loss to keep the coal plants online. All the operators are standing by to bring things back online for the assumed eventuality that the wind surplus wanes.
Note for everyone who wants to debate me: I am only relating to you my understanding of the conversations that I've had with my Dad. There are no news articles. I don't know how long this will last and I certainly don't understand everything about our electrical grid. I hope that my explanation is more satisfactory this time.
Please don't make unfounded assertions regarding whether or not you think this is possible. If you don't know, why not take my word for it? If you know something that I don't, please share it with all of us and let's learn together.
by NoodleSnoo http://ift.tt/21Z6LPT
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