— from Tom Owens —

OPALCO held a meeting (July 12) to examine future of energy for the Co-Op. Mr. Dauciunas is reported to have stated that since San Juan County gets 98% of its electricity from Canada (hydro, solar and wind) new electric cars here run on hydro. This would lead potential electric buyers to believe that their new electric car does not pollute.

Electric cars have some real benefits. OPALCO electricity is much cheaper than gasoline. New load is good for OPALCO if it does not push us over our BPA contract limits or require more investment. There a great tax credits when you buy a new electric car. But the cost of replacing the battery is certainly an interesting issue.

If we are to believe that electric cars in San Juan County do not pollute because they run on clean Canadian electricity, a couple of questions need to be answered.

Is there extra hydro power up there in Canada just sitting idle to serve OPALCO when a new electric car is added to the system?

Since hydro power is the least-cost resource on the electric system, why would it be sitting idle?

Would the Canadians pass up revenue that could be made by running all their hydro power resources at full available capacity and selling the product, rather than reserving some for OPALCO?

Is there really extra hydro power available to serve OPALCO’s new electric car load?

The electric generation resources in our interconnection (the western 1/3 of the US, BC and Alberta) include all types of fuel sources. Below is the percentage of total generation each resource type produced in 2015.

  • Natural Gas 32%
  • Coal 26%
  • Hydro 23%
  • Nuclear 7%
  • Wind 5%
  • Other Renewables 3%
  • Solar 2%
  • Other Thermal 2%

You can see that every type of resource was used to meeting electric demand in 2015. Trying to say that OPALCO gets only clean hydro just leaves other people to demand more of the other resources. At the end of the day, a new load anywhere on the system must be served from some resource that is not operating at full available capacity.

Simply put, the electric system operators will always run the lowest cost resource to its full available capacity before they start the next lowest cost resource and run it up to full load and so on. They do this to minimize their electric production cost. The highest cost resources will be run last and will have the extra capacity available to meet new loads (like your new electric car). The lowest cost resources are hydro, solar and wind. Nuclear is next. Natural gas follows. The highest cost resource is coal.

Coal powers your new electric vehicle, even here in the San Juans.

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