Comment by cogman10

Comment by cogman10 5 hours ago

4 replies

Yup, my home state of Idaho also has a shockingly green energy portfolio. All of the PNW is like that because it's on a shared grid that has been primarily powered by hydro for as long as I've been alive.

And still, we've seen a massive amount of green energy installed here. Both windmills and solar farms.

kixiQu 5 hours ago

For what it's worth Oregon and Washington are pretty much at the bottom of new renewable installs: https://www.propublica.org/article/oregon-washington-green-e...

  • cogman10 4 hours ago

    Yup, Idaho's on that list as well.

    But when you look at a grid map you pretty quickly understand why that's the case.

    https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-IPCO/live/fif...

    Right now, about 6% of my power comes from natural gas. That's the only fossil fuel power I'm currently using. Everything else is solar/hydro/wind. Not sure why nuclear isn't listed, I thought we had an active plant here. But you get the picture.

    For my grid, new solar or wind is simply not needed so why would we be anywhere near the top of installation? Batteries is what we actually need.

    There is a point where it's a bad idea to install more renewables.

kitten_mittens_ 4 hours ago

Idaho Power’s local generation is quite clean. But…during the summer in Idaho, almost a third of energy comes from Wyoming and Utah where coal is still a substantial part of generation.

  • cogman10 4 hours ago

    Idaho power has been working at installing batteries across the state I believe for this very reason.

    They have a plan to be 100% renewable by 2030 and I believe they'll actually hit that target given how close they already are.