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There are several reasons: 1) lifetimes of utility assets are measured in decades, not years 2) the utility industry is not used to needing to pay attention t

There are several reasons: 1) lifetimes of utility assets are measured in decades, not years 2) the utility industry is not used to needing to pay attention to new technology and new information, and has a huge bias against renewables that goes back to the hard energy /soft energy split of the 1970s and 1980s 3) Utility planning models (IRPs, often for five years out) often use outdated info that is 3-5 years old when planning deployments for the next five years. So even if utilities used up to date info, it would take 5 years for them to shift strategy. 4) many utilities are not incentivized to install least cost generation, and their incentives and profit rates are different for things like installing transmission, distribution, etc 5) regulators of utilities are often even further behind the times than utility executives or completely captured (see for example Arizona)

credit_guy 5y ago
> 1) lifetimes of utility assets are measured in decades, not years Fair enough, but here's [1] how the picture looked just 4 years ago. Coal was at 33%, natgas at 33% an solar at 0.6%, wind at 4.7%. So a lot of coal was replaced by natgas, and a bit of wind. For some reason solar went up only by 1.7% [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20170322133856/https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 http://web.archive.org/web/20170322133856/https://www.eia.go...
- epistasis 5y ago
  The reasons further down explain why utilities are very slow to react and why even after a better choice is available. But even with your further comparison, you are falling prey to the same bad logic: solar can't be cheaper because we aren't already using it. You are looking at the decisions from 2010 to 2015 to evaluate the situation from 2021. For changing technology, that's a really bad assumption. If nearly all the market for CPUs is Intel, then AMD comes out with a far better deal than Intel, do you evaluate how much better AMD is by the installed base across all computer? Of course not. Check out what is being planned for the future. Some of the decisions are not great, because utilities don't yet know that storage is super cheap. But you'll find that in price responsive markets, nearly all new planned generation is wind, solar, and storage. Along with a few new gas plants proposed by people hedging against the dominant tech, or just through inertia.

credit_guy 5y ago

> 1) lifetimes of utility assets are measured in decades, not years Fair enough, but here's [1] how the picture looked just 4 years ago. Coal was at 33%, natgas at 33% an solar at 0.6%, wind at 4.7%. So a lot of coal was replaced by natgas, and a bit of wind. For some reason solar went up only by 1.7% [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20170322133856/https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 http://web.archive.org/web/20170322133856/https://www.eia.go...

epistasis 5y ago
The reasons further down explain why utilities are very slow to react and why even after a better choice is available. But even with your further comparison, you are falling prey to the same bad logic: solar can't be cheaper because we aren't already using it. You are looking at the decisions from 2010 to 2015 to evaluate the situation from 2021. For changing technology, that's a really bad assumption. If nearly all the market for CPUs is Intel, then AMD comes out with a far better deal than Intel, do you evaluate how much better AMD is by the installed base across all computer? Of course not. Check out what is being planned for the future. Some of the decisions are not great, because utilities don't yet know that storage is super cheap. But you'll find that in price responsive markets, nearly all new planned generation is wind, solar, and storage. Along with a few new gas plants proposed by people hedging against the dominant tech, or just through inertia.