This is an accurate representation of the situation. Ratepayers are locked into ...

epistasis · on Aug 7, 2021

Thanks for the additional links supporting this, something that I though would be well known by the HN community as it's a very interesting technology change, I was quite surprised to be downvoted to quickly.

Perhaps my use of the word "corruption" comes across as too strong. But for government-granted monopolies, the bias shown by utility planning in recent years can only be described by such a word. There's an inexplicable allegiance to technologies that cost utilities more than renewables and storage, and given that renewables would let utilities charge for lots of transmission upgrades that are a great source of profits, their behavior is really difficult to explain at all without corruption being a motivation. It can't be explained by seeking profit for investors.

ncphil · on Aug 7, 2021

"Entrenched interests", then. It's characteristic of the postwar global economy. Big companies who made a fortune producing weapons to defeat the Axis worked hard to prevent a meaningful postwar demobilization by the US. Of course all that military power also made it possible for us to politically and economically dominate the world. So, a two-fer.

My first apartment, in late 70s South Jersey, had gas heat while a lot of old construction in the Northeast was solidly slaved to oil. The economics of gas were well known 40 years ago, but all those oil burners needed to fail first. There was actually a resurgence of coal around that time.

I was big on nuclear right up until 1979, when TMI finally made the case that it might not be the panacea advertised: at least as deployed by the (monumentally corrupt) 20th century private energy sector. Just prior to that the biggest challenge everyone agreed had to be overcome was the waste problem. Seems no one wants to talk about that any more. Today's nuclear advocates sound more and more like the overoptimistic cheerleaders of the 50s and 60s.

Anyway, we just replaced our outdoor gas pack a few years ago. At the time I balked at the few thousand more that a heat pump would have cost (heat pumps make a lot of sense in the South where we now live). Looks like I'll be regretting that one for the next 7 or 8 years.