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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

> The higher oil consumption is temporary until delayed utility scale solar and geothermal projects come online

Then why not keep the plant online until solar is running. Increasing energy costs will affect the poorest and most vulnerable. There’s no pressing need to shut down the plant sooner than its replacement is ready.

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Because coal plant retirements (and the coal deliveries those plants require) are planned quite a bit in advance. Average electric bill will go up $15/month (~4%) in the interim (not trivial, but also not catastrophic). It’s a political issue to subsidize that unexpected short term cost, not a technical issue to keep an aging plant running.

Energy transitions aren’t easy. There will be missteps.

(I would agree the local and or state government should provide support for low income electric users impacted by this until rates come back down from more renewables online pushing out oil generation; cut the utility a check and define the means testing)

To me it’s a clear case of bad policy. Good goals don’t magically make for good policy.

> Average electric bill will go up $15/month

What does bad policy look like in your opinion, if not this? It’s an avoidable fuck-up.

If a 4% increase seems like bad policy to you in a high inflation (~9%) macro environment, your expectations are likely unrealistic. There would’ve been a cost to keep the coal plant running, including buying coal on the spot market at highly elevated (compared to long term contracts) prices (~300-400%).

https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/coal-price

https://www.wvpublic.org/energy-environment/2022-07-12/coal-...

It’s an avoidable 4% increase. That’s why I think it’s poor execution.

If my city increased by utility price by 4% because they messed up the sequencing on a contract it would be a sign of poor planning.

Sure, but the cost of really good planning that never messes up sequencing is likely to add a lot more than 4% to your utility bill.

How much more are you really willing to pay for completely flawless sequencing?

Part of the issues were due to an unforeseen pandemic that messed up the supply chains and increased prices drastically. However keeping the plant running may not have been feasible. There's some coal plants on Maui were parts suppliers shutdown or simply don't produce spares anymore. The energy producer there is faced at trying to get custom fabricated parts and hoping they work or building a whole new plant to provide interim power. A lot of these projects were planned years in advance and major disruptions (like a global pandemic) can wreak havoc on plans.

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