Bill would penalize utilities for wind-generated electricity for Wyoming customers

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Bill would penalize utilities for wind-generated electricity for Wyoming customers

Heather Richards 307-266-0592, [e-mail]

@hroxaner

Updated 19 hrs ago

A bill proposed by six state lawmakers would charge utilities a penalty if they use wind or solar energy to provide Wyoming consumers with electricity.

If Senate File 71 were law, there would be six permissible resources for generating electricity for Wyomingites, including natural gas and coal. Wind and solar are not on the list, except for individual use.

Utilities would have a year to reach the first compliance milestone of the bill, in which each company would have to get 95 percent of its Wyoming-sold energy from the approved resources. ... The following year, 2019, companies must reach 100 percent compliance.

Under the bill, if electricity were generated by wind or solar in Wyoming to serve customers in the state it would come with a $10-per-megawatt-hour penalty. That penalty would be double the suggested tax hike on wind also under consideration this legislative session.

Same story, in the Billings Gazette:

Bill would penalize utilities for wind-generated electricity for Wyoming customers

[elleng]

1. We've heard similar, in other places,

and it always seems to me it's from the Onion, and/or other historical satirical sources. I STILL can't believe it.

[Auggie]

2. Politicians throwing bones to their carbon donors?

[MrPurple]

3. This is perverse and if wind wasn't a pracital alternative, they wouldn't bother to do this

[guillaumeb]

4. I am betting that this is an ALEC idea that was promoted to serve the Koch brothers and Big Oil.

Not surprised at all by this type of action from politicians eager to repay their owners/contributors.

[safeinOhio]

5. Possible for other states

to add a surcharges for using any energy source from Wyoming?

[msongs]

6. great news, more alt energy for the rest of us at a lower price :-) nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. I don't have any knowledge of how grid pricing is accomplished, but

electrons are pretty much interchangeable. I suppose that all the megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy generated by renewable resources can be exported to adjacent and other nearby states on the grid, leaving the energy that stays within Wyoming "pure."

I mean, it's just accounting. For every MWh of renewable-sourced energy that enters the grid, that much is sent out of state. The actual electrons don't care.

I think that's some Great Plains grid they're on. I'll have to look this up later.

Per Google:

Wide area synchronous grid

Western Interconnection

The Western Interconnection is a wide area synchronous grid and one of the two major alternating current (AC) power grids in the continental U.S. power transmission grid. The other major wide area synchronous grid is the Eastern Interconnection. The three minor interconnections are the Québec Interconnection, the Texas Interconnection, and the Alaska Interconnection.

All of the electric utilities in the Western Interconnection are electrically tied together during normal system conditions and operate at a synchronized frequency of 60 Hz. The Western Interconnection stretches from Western Canada south to Baja California in Mexico, reaching eastward over the Rockies to the Great Plains.