[GreenKeys] OT: Measurement of Power Line Noise

[E.]

On wind power here in Nebraska:  Sadly private wind companies have shied away from working with the public power here in the state, even though the state legislature has passes incentives to draw them in and Nebraska ranks fourth in the nation in wind power potential (guess they don’t like the checks & balances)… plus a number of rural land owners have been fighting the few proposed wind farms in court — NIMBY (a different topic altogether)… so the state has been pivoting towards solar farms instead (thirteenth in the nation in potential).

A list of all generating stations in Nebraska can be found here:

https://neo.ne.gov/programs/stats/inf/56.html

…but there is only one nuclear power plant that comes to mind (Cooper), two major hydroelectric dams, I believe only three major coal plants, a handful of natural gas stations - mainly used as backups (a number used for the first time in decades due to the big Texas freeze a few years ago) and the rest are mostly owned by local utilities during peak times… so who knows.  I do know that any excess revenue gets put back into the system for resilience and upgrades.

I’m also just glad that I can complain to one of my local public power board representatives about something as opposed to some random customer service agent on a 1-800 line ;p .


> On Mar 25, 2024, at 5:38 PM, Jones, Douglas W <douglas-w-jones at uiowa.edu> wrote:
> 
> From:  E. [hanyou at xsmail.com] -- Monday, March 25, 2024 4:02 PM
> 
>> I’m thankful that Nebraska is a public power-only state…
>> no silly guidelines for profit nor profiting off of something that everyone needs…
>> some of the lowest rates in the nation too!
> 
> I just checked.  Nebraska residential power is 10.58 ¢/kWh
> I live in Iowa, we pay 11.88 ¢/kWh, more than you, but still dirt cheap compared to much of the country.
> Nebraska is public power, Iowa is mostly investor-owned utilities.  Perhaps you can charge that penny difference in price to the free-enterprise system, but something else is at play here.
> 
> One factor may be wind.  Iowa got 60% of its power from wind in 2020, and the fraction has been rising.  Last year, my utility announced that its total wind generation over the year equaled its total power delivered to customers.  That's not 100% green energy because during peak demand periods, they burned fossil fuel and during peak wind generation, they exported lots of power.  North Dakota has even more wind generation per capita, and their rates are similarly low.
> 
> South Dakota and Nebraska aren't in the same league as North Dakota and Iowa for wind power, but in wind generation per capita they're 6th in the US, which you can't sneeze at.  Nebraska also has very low transportation costs for Wyoming coal, being right next door.
> 
>               Doug Jones