Natural gas is crushing wind and solar power

[D Coyne + 305]

18 hours ago, 0R0 said:

I have not looked at their database. Will go through it if it is publicly accessible with "in the weeds" data. 

I am saying that the general climate change community relies on the heavily contaminated databases. Fraudulent data coming from practically ALL country's doctoring of their temperature records keeps popping up in the scientific news. The entire field has thus been put in question as a science altogether. When Governments provide the funding and are motivated to impose goals on the researchers, their work becomes blanketed by doubt, if not outright dismissal by technical people outside the field. 

The "doctoring" is called science, what you have been fooled by is merchants of doubt, very much like a similar group that said there was no link between cigarette smoking and health problems.  There is no global conspiracy to doctor the temperature data, attempts are made to eliminate bad and redundant data, etc.

For those that claim the satellite temperature data is better, that data relies heavily on theoretical models which can be questioned just like the climate models can. Note that I wonder what you consider to be "scientific news", do you mean blogs that are not peer reviewed?  

See also

http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/Methods-GIGS-1-103.pdf

Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process

Robert Rohde1 , Richard Muller1,2,3 *, Robert Jacobsen2,3 , Saul Perlmutter2,3 , Arthur Rosenfeld2,3 , Jonathan Wurtele2,3 , Judith Curry4 , Charlotte Wickham5 and Steven Mosher1

Note the authors above.

[D Coyne + 305]

18 hours ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

So you’re not going to count the energy it took to extract fuel for the power plant? You’re going to lose if you put both systems in their entirety side by side. I knew you would mention combined cycle too. Why don’t we, then, take advantage of our thermochem technology and just produce gasoline from natural gas? That’s more efficient than combined cycle with EV, and you don’t suffer from pitiful energy density and charge time. 

Yes that should be included as well. In principle, the electricity could be produced from wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, and geothermal energy, the point is the electrical energy that ron was suggesting was needed to replace the energy in the diesel and gasoline is about one third of the energy contained in an average gallon of liquid fuel (average for all diesel and gasoline used for land transport).  He was also concerned about transmission of the electricity, it will be quite a while before that would become a problem as most charging will occur when transmission lines are relatively idle.

[D Coyne + 305]

16 hours ago, markslawson said:

I meant briefly zero or even for a time zero and your entire argument is about the spot market which is only a fraction of the market. Most electricity is sold on fixed priced contract, but there is still enough activity to make an active spot market which wind farms have been known to crash by giving away their power. Then the next hour when the wind dies, the conventional plants have wound down as they can't sell anything, the price spikes. Wind and solar badly distort both the short term markets with wild variations in supply, and then distort the long-term because the conventional plants have trouble using the short term markets. The damage caused by cheap, green power is enormous..  

Mark,

Yes cheap power is a very bad thing. 

It is pretty easy to forecast this, there are these things called weather forecasts, perhaps you have heard of them?

They are not perfect, but are often used for planning.  The other person was talking about using curtailed wind and solar to produce hydrogen, the price of the electricity that has been curtailed would be low.

[D Coyne + 305]

14 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

I never said anything about an irrefutable theory, I said “irrefutable data”.

Doug,

Anything can be questioned, there are clowns that think the Earth is flat.  The temperature data is fine and often data is tied to theory, any engineer should understand that fact.

There is no irrefutable data.  Everything is questioned, many do not trust science, though that seems strange for engineers.

[D Coyne + 305]

13 hours ago, ronwagn said:

Your argument seems to fail to prove itself in Europe or anywhere else. All you see is higher energy prices of double or more. No savings at all from renewables unless you are off grid. Maybe you can explain that. 

Ron,

The higher energy prices are primarily due to taxes.

For land based wind in 2018 the LCOE was 4.2 cents per kWhr in the US.

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy20osti/74598.pdf

That is the average, for high wind resource areas (Iowa and Texas) the LCOE in 2018 for the best sites was about 3.1 cents per kWhr.

For Solar currently utility scale solar is about 6 cents per kWhr with a goal of 3 cents per kWhr by 2030

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/05/f51/SunShot 2030 Fact Sheet.pdf

Also see

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/12/20/utility-scale-solar-power-as-cheap-as-75¢-per-watt-says-government-researchers/

where again the best solar sites have power purchase agreements (PPA) as low as 2 cents per kWhr for post 2017 PPAs, with 27 of 38 PPA below 4 cents per kWhr, 21 PPA at less than 3 cents per kWhr and 4 at less than 2 cents per kWhr.

Also see

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

chart below from link above.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

2 hours ago, D Coyne said:

The "doctoring" is called science, what you have been fooled by is merchants of doubt, very much like a similar group that said there was no link between cigarette smoking and health problems.  There is no global conspiracy to doctor the temperature data, attempts are made to eliminate bad and redundant data, etc.

For those that claim the satellite temperature data is better, that data relies heavily on theoretical models which can be questioned just like the climate models can. Note that I wonder what you consider to be "scientific news", do you mean blogs that are not peer reviewed?  

See also

http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/Methods-GIGS-1-103.pdf

Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process

Robert Rohde1 , Richard Muller1,2,3 *, Robert Jacobsen2,3 , Saul Perlmutter2,3 , Arthur Rosenfeld2,3 , Jonathan Wurtele2,3 , Judith Curry4 , Charlotte Wickham5 and Steven Mosher1

Note the authors above.

Sadly people on this forum have posting links to places saying the smoking data was bad... some bullshit from a science FICTION author (Micheal Crichton, yes some of his books are entertaining, but you shouldn't use them as references).

Conspiracy theory @Tom posted it if I remember correctly...

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

 

I don't doubt that some here have come around to the idea that cigarette smoking is bad... but of course not smoke from tailpipes or refineries - that shit is healthy. 

If they eventually accepted the data and stopped blowing smoke in their babies faces there is some hope they will eventually realize pollution is bad too.  We can hope...

This is the current state of intelligence around here:

"In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible
for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking
adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of
thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven
studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and
that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of
1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action
by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine,
for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association
at the 95% coinfidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They
then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans
on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned
public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the
Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the
nation’s third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer
Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand
smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent."

https://jimmyakin.com/2004/12/crichton_on_sec.html

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 hours ago, D Coyne said:

Ron,

The higher energy prices are primarily due to taxes.

For land based wind in 2018 the LCOE was 4.2 cents per kWhr in the US.

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy20osti/74598.pdf

That is the average, for high wind resource areas (Iowa and Texas) the LCOE in 2018 for the best sites was about 3.1 cents per kWhr.

For Solar currently utility scale solar is about 6 cents per kWhr with a goal of 3 cents per kWhr by 2030

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/05/f51/SunShot 2030 Fact Sheet.pdf

Also see

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/12/20/utility-scale-solar-power-as-cheap-as-75¢-per-watt-says-government-researchers/

where again the best solar sites have power purchase agreements (PPA) as low as 2 cents per kWhr for post 2017 PPAs, with 27 of 38 PPA below 4 cents per kWhr, 21 PPA at less than 3 cents per kWhr and 4 at less than 2 cents per kWhr.

Also see

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

chart below from link above.

" With applicable tax subsidies" the wind blowing and the sun shining (Snark).  I will study more into it but I think it comes down to lying with statistics. I invite others to examine this also and to please comment. I want to know what the customers are paying after the installations of the wind and solar plants. What they supposedly cost to build and their production needs the highest level of scrutiny. Germany has failed to show adequate results with all their engineering efforts. I don't think we have better engineers than they do. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

5 hours ago, D Coyne said:

0R0,

There is a relatively simple model that can account for aerosols and other factors, see

https://contextearth.com/2013/10/26/csalt-model/

Note that when looked at globally, the heat island effect is minimal.  See

http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/UHI-GIGS-1-104.pdf

Chart below attemps a CSALT model based on simple linear regression on Berkeley Earth's Gloabl land ocean temperature cs the five variables of the CSALT model (which is admittedly far simpler than Global Land Ocean Carbon Cycle models).

The centered 15 year average is plated for Global Land Ocean Temperature vs the "Model" which has an adjusted R-squared of 0.8563.  Far from perfect but the physical reality is far more complex than what can be captured by such a simple conceptual model.  The transient climate response of the model (which ignores long term feedbacks as the ocean slowly warms with a typical 400 year lag) is about 2 C for this model for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration.  The model was done in 2016 so annual data was only available though 2015 at the time, I have not updated the model of late.

I have a better way. Check the ocean levels at specific spots around the world. Use old photographs of specific spots that do not have known land subsidence. Use historical records of all kinds. 

To find out what banks, insurance companies, engineers, builders think check on their actions. To check on what politicians think check on the oceanfront homes they buy. 

The Obama's recent Cape Cod Home purchase for example.

[ALB999 + 4]

Governments support renewables because of foreign policy as much as the environment.

Support of the natural gas market gives direct support to Russia, the commodities biggest producer.

If you want to weaken the positions of countries such as Russia, Saudia Arabia or Iran, the country must move away from FF as quickly as it can.

Those who want to stick with FF should be open about the full affect of their policy choices

 

[Guillaume Albasini + 851]

54 minutes ago, ALB999 said:

Governments support renewables because of foreign policy as much as the environment.

Support of the natural gas market gives direct support to Russia, the commodities biggest producer.

If you want to weaken the positions of countries such as Russia, Saudia Arabia or Iran, the country must move away from FF as quickly as it can.

Those who want to stick with FF should be open about the full affect of their policy choices

 

Yes, in Europe supporting renewable energy is also a question of energy independence.

KSA will be happy if Europe go on with oil

Russia will be happy with Europe switching from oil to gas

USA will be happy with Europe switching from piped gas to LNG

But Europeans will be happier switching from fossil fuels to renewables.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

9 hours ago, D Coyne said:

Doug,

Anything can be questioned, there are clowns that think the Earth is flat.  The temperature data is fine and often data is tied to theory, any engineer should understand that fact.

There is no irrefutable data.  Everything is questioned, many do not trust science, though that seems strange for engineers.

It is not strange for engineers to question others conclusions based on poor ‘science’ or cherry picked data to support pet theories, remember “Everything is questioned,”.

The temperature data may be fine, the problem is how that data is interpreted.

[markslawson + 1,057]

13 hours ago, D Coyne said:

It is pretty easy to forecast this, there are these things called weather forecasts, perhaps you have heard of them?

They are not perfect, but are often used for planning.

D Coyne 

That is all completely, totally wrong. They can't forecast stuff like that. Wind forecasting systems were a thing a few years back but as far as I know they never added anything to grid planning. I think the problem was that they could forecast to a certain percentage accuracy but that wasn't enough for grid planning. Anyway, until I read that statement I had no idea just how little you knew about this stuff. I'll leave you to your dreams. I have my own..  

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Sarcasm, properly employed is a tool and a form of entertainment. Uniformed sarcasm simply makes you look stupid....

[Coffeeguyzz + 454]

Mr. Ronwgn

 

I will make 2 postings ... this one and a following (possibly tomorrow) addressing your comment and Dennis' contribution.

The second post will include a brief noting of several highly informative sources from which any serious student of this electricity/power generation field may glean an exceptionally comprehensive education.

 

To Dennis' comments (I will express units in the customary  dollars per Megawatt hours as the EIA site does) ...

Anytime one sees 'cents per kilowatt hours' it is usually a tip off that a renewable advocate is sourcing the article as 'cents' sounds cheaper than 'dollars'.

This is but one of a myriad array of techniques in this ongoing, maddening propaganda war.

 

So, Dennis touts $42/Mwh with Texas and Iowa coming in at el cheapo $31 per.

Hmmmm ...

As of this moment (after midnight ET), Dennis' region is paying just under $12 /Mwh.

For the entire month of January, the New England region paid about 26 bucks per Mwh.

As of this posting, wind is providing the highest percentage in the near decade that I have been monitoring at 12%. (Source is iso-ne.com).

Say again ....12 freakin per cent of ALL New England's electricity is coming from whirleys.

Natgas is providing 32%, and the nuke boys an unusually high - per centage wise - 41%.

The 3 nukes provide a steady-as-she-goes ~3,400 Megawatts 24/7/365.

Their brand new, ultra efficient Combined Cycle Gas Plants have provided up to ~14,000 Mwhs or - like right now - as little as ~2,500 Mwhs ... depending upon market need/demand.

'Load following' is the term that we lay folks may think of as "turning the sumbitch on when needed".

To state the obvious, when the wind don't blow and the sun don't glow, the Ra/Zephyr folks have a problem.

 

When Dennis uses those verifiable numbers from outstanding sources such as that February LCOE/LACE release from the EIA, it is an great reference point ... but without context, one can draw conclusions that veer from Real World circumstances.

 

This is a fascinating field in which I was prompted to enter by Dennis himself about 6 years back in order to clarify a ... misleading ... article written by an Australian Greenie.

In fact, Mr. Ronwagn, that fall-on-the-floor hilarious comment upthread about the South Australia battery paying itself off in a few months MIGHT be an outstanding example of preposterous propaganda that COULD be presented as factually correct, but ... I suspect the $14, 000/Mwh price point may play a role. (That is no typo. South Australia spot wholesale pricing reguarly hits $14,000/Mwh when the whirleys die late afternoon on hot days).

I'll not pursue this as I have spent umpteen hours in learning of these affairs and - while extraordinarily edifying - the 'spin' becomes dogma only to the True Disbelievers.

 

More sourcing info tomorrow, but the November 2019 Lazard Levelized Cost Of Electricity - LCOE  13.0 - is a great starting point.

Keenly parsing - and understanding - the footnotes is crucial lest one thinks any of this Renewable shit makes a lick of sense.

[D Coyne + 305]

16 hours ago, ronwagn said:

" With applicable tax subsidies" the wind blowing and the sun shining (Snark).  I will study more into it but I think it comes down to lying with statistics. I invite others to examine this also and to please comment. I want to know what the customers are paying after the installations of the wind and solar plants. What they supposedly cost to build and their production needs the highest level of scrutiny. Germany has failed to show adequate results with all their engineering efforts. I don't think we have better engineers than they do. 

Ron,

Generally people here only believe what supports their preconceived notions.  Anything published by government agencies or scientists is not to be believed, we should only believe what is published on blogs that are not peer reviewed, any conspiracy theory is more trustworthy than publications by those evil scientists. /sarc off

Note that Germany started early so much of their installed capacity is older less efficient equipment.  Currently wind and solar power is much cheaper.

For the US average retail electricity in 2019 was 10.21 cents per kWhr (all sectors), for those 4 states with the highest percentage of net generation from wind (all had more than 25% of net generation from wind power in 2019) their average price was 8.27 cents per kWhr.  The average net generation from wind for the 4 states was 36.7% in 2019.  The 4 states are (from highest to lowest percentage of net generation) Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and North Dakota with 42%, 41%, 35%, and 27% net generation from wind power respectively.

Data at 

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/

[D Coyne + 305]

11 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

It is not strange for engineers to question others conclusions based on poor ‘science’ or cherry picked data to support pet theories, remember “Everything is questioned,”.

The temperature data may be fine, the problem is how that data is interpreted.

Doug,

Try

http://berkeleyearth.org/papers/

Many of these papers are very good in my opinion.  The notion that the scientists are not interpreting things correctly and that there is a conspiracy by the scientific community to mislead is simply false.  Did you find that engineers in general were prone to mislead in your experience?  What would make you believe this would be true of scientists in general?

Just wondering.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

6 minutes ago, D Coyne said:

Doug,

Try

http://berkeleyearth.org/papers/

Many of these papers are very good in my opinion.  The notion that the scientists are not interpreting things correctly and that there is a conspiracy by the scientific community to mislead is simply false.  Did you find that engineers in general were prone to mislead in your experience?  What would make you believe this would be true of scientists in general?

Just wondering.

You must be joking!😂

A website with an address such as berkeleyearth.org is going to be an unbiased source of environmental information!

[D Coyne + 305]

5 hours ago, Coffeeguyzz said:

Mr. Ronwgn

 

I will make 2 postings ... this one and a following (possibly tomorrow) addressing your comment and Dennis' contribution.

The second post will include a brief noting of several highly informative sources from which any serious student of this electricity/power generation field may glean an exceptionally comprehensive education.

 

To Dennis' comments (I will express units in the customary  dollars per Megawatt hours as the EIA site does) ...

Anytime one sees 'cents per kilowatt hours' it is usually a tip off that a renewable advocate is sourcing the article as 'cents' sounds cheaper than 'dollars'.

This is but one of a myriad array of techniques in this ongoing, maddening propaganda war.

 

So, Dennis touts $42/Mwh with Texas and Iowa coming in at el cheapo $31 per.

Hmmmm ...

As of this moment (after midnight ET), Dennis' region is paying just under $12 /Mwh.

For the entire month of January, the New England region paid about 26 bucks per Mwh.

As of this posting, wind is providing the highest percentage in the near decade that I have been monitoring at 12%. (Source is iso-ne.com).

Say again ....12 freakin per cent of ALL New England's electricity is coming from whirleys.

Natgas is providing 32%, and the nuke boys an unusually high - per centage wise - 41%.

The 3 nukes provide a steady-as-she-goes ~3,400 Megawatts 24/7/365.

Their brand new, ultra efficient Combined Cycle Gas Plants have provided up to ~14,000 Mwhs or - like right now - as little as ~2,500 Mwhs ... depending upon market need/demand.

'Load following' is the term that we lay folks may think of as "turning the sumbitch on when needed".

To state the obvious, when the wind don't blow and the sun don't glow, the Ra/Zephyr folks have a problem.

 

When Dennis uses those verifiable numbers from outstanding sources such as that February LCOE/LACE release from the EIA, it is an great reference point ... but without context, one can draw conclusions that veer from Real World circumstances.

 

This is a fascinating field in which I was prompted to enter by Dennis himself about 6 years back in order to clarify a ... misleading ... article written by an Australian Greenie.

In fact, Mr. Ronwagn, that fall-on-the-floor hilarious comment upthread about the South Australia battery paying itself off in a few months MIGHT be an outstanding example of preposterous propaganda that COULD be presented as factually correct, but ... I suspect the $14, 000/Mwh price point may play a role. (That is no typo. South Australia spot wholesale pricing reguarly hits $14,000/Mwh when the whirleys die late afternoon on hot days).

I'll not pursue this as I have spent umpteen hours in learning of these affairs and - while extraordinarily edifying - the 'spin' becomes dogma only to the True Disbelievers.

 

More sourcing info tomorrow, but the November 2019 Lazard Levelized Cost Of Electricity - LCOE  13.0 - is a great starting point.

Keenly parsing - and understanding - the footnotes is crucial lest one thinks any of this Renewable shit makes a lick of sense.

Coffeeguyzz,

I only use cents per kWhr because many people see that on their electricity bill (or that is how it is done where I live).

4.2 cents per kWhr is equal to $42/ MWhr that is correct as it is fairly obvious that 0.042 times 1000 is equal to 42.

Much ado about nothing there.

In Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and North Dakota in 2019 they had 37% of net generation from wind.  Their average electricity price for all sectors is $82.75/MWhr where for the US the average price for all sectors was $102.70/MWhr or about 24% higher than these high wind states.

[D Coyne + 305]

5 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

You must be joking!😂

A website with an address such as berkeleyearth.org is going to be an unbiased source of environmental information!

Berkeley Earth was conceived by Richard and Elizabeth Muller in early 2010 when they found merit in some of the concerns of skeptics. They organized a group of scientists to reanalyze the Earth’s surface temperature record, and published their initial findings in 2012. Berkeley Earth became an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) in February 2013.

From  http://berkeleyearth.org/about/

Among the contributing authors on the following paper was Judith Curry, the owner of the Climate etc blog

see

http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/Methods-GIGS-1-103.pdf

If you would rather not learn, then stick with conspiracy blogs.

[D Coyne + 305]

7 hours ago, markslawson said:

D Coyne 

That is all completely, totally wrong. They can't forecast stuff like that. Wind forecasting systems were a thing a few years back but as far as I know they never added anything to grid planning. I think the problem was that they could forecast to a certain percentage accuracy but that wasn't enough for grid planning. Anyway, until I read that statement I had no idea just how little you knew about this stuff. I'll leave you to your dreams. I have my own..  

Mark,

I am not an expert in the field, can you explain how they "plan for" power line interruptions from hurricanes, tornadoes, cars running into poles with transformers on them etc.

The task is no doubt a statistical exercise, changes in wind and solar output is simply another statistical input to the model.  They seem to be able to deal with this in the Great plains and other areas where there is significant wind power (35% of net generation for the 4 states with the highest percentage of net generation from wind).  Over time I imagine they will improve grid planning.

[D Coyne + 305]

16 hours ago, ronwagn said:

I have a better way. Check the ocean levels at specific spots around the world. Use old photographs of specific spots that do not have known land subsidence. Use historical records of all kinds. 

To find out what banks, insurance companies, engineers, builders think check on their actions. To check on what politicians think check on the oceanfront homes they buy. 

The Obama's recent Cape Cod Home purchase for example.

Ron,

The sea level rise problems won't be significant for 100 years.  So looking at where the wealthy buy homes probably tells us very little.

In any case, when the sea level rises, you just sell the home to a climate skeptic.  They can be found at conspiracy blogs. 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

10 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Sarcasm, properly employed is a tool and a form of entertainment. Uniformed sarcasm simply makes you look stupid....

My uniformed sarcasm sometimes changes into different uniforms.

/ chill, its a joke.

 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

7 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

You must be joking!😂

A website with an address such as berkeleyearth.org is going to be an unbiased source of environmental information!

Ok but the major oil players agree climate change is real. Is this biased news?

https://www.shell.ca/en_ca/sustainability/environment.html

 

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/sustainability/climate-change.html

Edited March 5, 2020 by Enthalpic

[Coffeeguyzz + 454]

Dennis

Wow. Now you have - once again - prompted to go WAY out into the weeds on this stuff.

Very educational, fascinating, important topic, this arena of electricity generation.

But - to emphatically re-state your (and Mr. Patterson's) observation ... "People tend to believe what they wish to be true". This is an ancient concept expressed by many prominent philosophers spanning thousands of years that is accurate, extremely important and - tragically  - universally ignored.

 

To the point raised earlier concerning taxes and monthly electric bills (this is crucial to your 4 state low electric bill/high wind component example).

Simplistically, monthly electric bills (similar to gas) can be broken into 4 distinct components 

1)  The commodity - electricity -  is a 'pass through' item with no, or minimally nominal mark up (this is an important concept to understand).

2) Transmission costs, aka long distance wires (pipelines for gas).

3)  The local utility's overhead, cost of operations, and acceptable projected profit.

Note ... Utilities are hybrid private/publicly supervised entities that are owned by private parties via shares of stock, but granted monopoly status in specific regions and allowed use of public space (underground piping/wiring, hardware are all on public property). The 'touchy' aspects in this set up focus on "profit" (see PG&E), and the MANDATORY dictats from goverments - mostly, but not completely, emanating from states.

Hence, your referenced PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements) are MANDATED by local governments compelling local utilities to PURCHASE electricity from favored - aka "green" - generators. Again, observe closely, learn of this unfolding PG&E fiasco to get a glimpse of the future.

Better yet, learn of the recent history of South Australia and recognize why people STILL believe gigantic, preposterous batteries make economic sense.

4) Taxes and government defined fees.

 

Your 4 states derive their power - and pricing - primarily through their regional ISO (Independent Systems Operator), which happens to be the SPP (Southwest Power Pool). 2018 fuel sources ~65,000 Megawatt, 14 state region were coal/42%, natgas/23%, wind/23%.

The next 2 years, Dennis, should see a continued ramp in wind production due to the PTC (Production Tax Credits) which give the generators about 23 bucks credit for every freakin' Megawatthour they produce ... whether the grid needs it at 4:00 AM in March or not (see Scotland for an extreme example).

 

Gonna end here, but post - shortly - some sourcing info for Mr. Ronwagn, you, or anyone should they wish to gain a more expansive,  coldly data-driven perspective on just what the heck is going on.