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A comment on Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid. Parent comment

Re:Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods... by jartelt on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @04:36PM (#17710515)
CA is a huge state with a lot of grid to manage. There are lot of transmission lines and lots of trees, fires, mountains etc. that must be dealt with when doing grid maintenance.

Utilities also over installed a lot of generation capacity after the blackouts in the 2000s. We are still footing the bill for all the natural gas plants they built out of fear for future blackouts. Electricity demand has been flat since 2008, and many generators don't get used much (yet rate payers still paid a guaranteed rate of return to the utility to build the plants).

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Re:Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods... by floatrock on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @05:41PM (#17711105)
LA Times did a big piece about misaligned utility incentives: http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-capacity/

Basically utilities don't really make money on generation, they make money by building infrastructure, financing that with a 20-year bond, and passing it onto the rate payers. So if you make money by building power plants, you're going to build power plants and make the ratepayers pay for it.

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