Nice article and interactive graphic for power sources per state

[peakbagger]

This was too good to bury in the energy miracle thread and deserves its own thread

(broken link removed)

If you hover over the states it gives you the split between sources. I was surprised at how much renewable Maine has unfortunately the trade off is they have some of the highest power rates in the country.

The graphic does have its limitations, it only shows how much power is produced rather than when it is produced.

The graphic on wind was also generation was also interesting showing that New England does have some wind (which happens to line up pretty well with wind resource maps)

 

[Where2]

I was surprised at how much renewable Maine has unfortunately the trade off is they have some of the highest power rates in the country.

Is it really that much higher in Maine, or just certain areas of Maine?
My Emera Maine base electric meter fee is actually lower than my Florida Power and Light base fee...
My Emera supplier rate has only been $0.08493/kWh for the last 5 months.
My FPL supplier rate has been averaging $0.0855/kwh this year. (In Florida, I'm powered by some state of the art NG fired plants less than 5 years old).

 

[woodgeek]

I liked that graphic too. Why does HI have so little solar listed? Is this 'big solar' only, and excludes rooftop? The 8% solar in CA suggests it does include rooftop. Hmmm.

 

[Where2]

The FPL solar thermal plant closest to my home doesn't even show as a blip on the map (it's got ~500 acres of parabolic mirrors, N27.051152, W80.547971), but the coal fired "co-generation" plant a mile away (N27.037401, W80.520063) built to generate power for a cluster of nearby industrial users shows up. Seems odd, but since it's not in the WJ backyard, I can understand their unfamiliarity with these facilities. They also list my nearest brand new NG fueled facility (N26.765088, W80.052538) as being oil fired (the previous generation plant on the same property had been oil fired and was built in the 1950s). I watched the day they imploded that facility.

 

[peakbagger]

I agree there are some flaws and it may be related to different dates for the various snapshots of data. VT Yankee is shown and its now closed

 

[DBoon]

I would suspect that this data doesn't show the "behind the meter" solar production as well - that is estimated (by my recollection from other sources, sorry - no link) to be about equal to total "utility-scale" before the meter production.

 

[iamlucky13]

Nice. The Grand Coulee Dam really stands out on the map.

This is similar to the EIA state energy profiles page (which was probably the root source). If you click on a state, you can zoom in to individual power plants, and if you view the data browser on those plants, you can even see their production over time. I haven't yet figured out if it's possible to get the production over time of an entire state or region, however.
http://www.eia.gov/state/

I liked that graphic too. Why does HI have so little solar listed? Is this 'big solar' only, and excludes rooftop? The 8% solar in CA suggests it does include rooftop. Hmmm.

I don't think it includes rooftop, because I think the dataset this comes from is based on utility-reported generation, although perhaps some utilities do include what they buy through net metering. California does have a significant number of large solar installations.

Regardless, Hawaii has had significant challenges expanding their use of solar power despite being the state that probably has the most to benefit from it (lots of sunshine and already high energy prices). The grid is inherently fragmented between the islands, which makes it harder to shift energy around efficiently as demand and production vary from place to place. The Hawaiian electric grid developed at a relatively slow pace and didn't build in very high capacity in the first place, due to the relative lack of heavy industry, lack of large daily or seasonal demand peaks to fulfill, and low demand due to the high prices.

As a result, many of the islands have already run into problems with the mid-day production from rooftop systems maxing out the local grid capacity, and they've had to institute quotas for how many solar installations they'll approve in an area until. In the meantime, they're upgrading the local lines in a piecemeal fashion.

Oahu, as the most heavily developed island, is the least affected by this, but it's also, as I understand, the island with the lowest energy prices, so the incentive to invest in solar is lowest there.

 

[georgepds]

....
Regardless, Hawaii has had significant challenges expanding their use of solar power despite being the state that probably has the most to benefit from it (lots of sunshine and already high energy prices). The grid is inherently fragmented between the islands, ....

I wonder why we don't hear more about geothermal in Hi., it seems like a natural

 

[jharkin]

Nice map.... Ive had people argue to me how backward and un-green Mass is in our power consumption (wink wink)- but from this map I see our oil and coal generation is only 20% or so... not too bad!

And our solar share ranks #5 nationwide. HA!



Now we need to work on increasing our wind share as fast as we are increasing solar.

 

[peakbagger]

Now we need to work on increasing our wind share as fast as we are increasing solar.

Mass is increasing its wind share by building them in NH and Maine