Idaho Power is one of the three big power companies that covers a portion of Idaho -- they serve the southwest, Avista is in the northwest, and PacifiCorp is in spots in the southeast [1].
Idaho Power has been, for several years, planning to pull out as a partner from the 3 coal power plants it has an ownership share in: North Valmy in NV, Jim Bridger in WY, and Boardman in OR [2]. Jim Bridger will have soon been due for an expensive upgrade because of environmental regulations, Boardman has seen consistent pressure from Oregon activists and regulators to bring the shutdown date closer, and North Valmy has seen less and less use because the other owner has succeeded meeting most of the Northern Nevada demand with a robust mix of natgas and solar, but also has fresh interconnects with Southern Nevada and Idaho.
In 2018, Idaho Power also joined [3] the Western Energy Imbalance Market, which streamlines realtime energy trading in the WECC interconnect. As time goes on and coal plants are retired, coal's share will decline in the energy mix, and there will be an increasing amount of quasi-'baseload' solar available to buy in the energy market. And for the times in the day when the solar generation drops off and natgas plants would often be the next sellers, Idaho Power has plenty of its own hydro it can deploy to compensate. But note that despite their well-situated position with renewables, their target for 100% renewables is still 2045 -- relatively far off.
The seasonality of solar is reasonably well matched to Idaho's consumption patterns. The 3 months with the highest demand for fossil generated electricity in Idaho are July, August, and September. This is in contrast to e.g. Germany where wintertime demand is highest.
Awkwardly, this excellent data is all in Excel files. I got the numbers from Monthly data from Electric Power Monthly - Fossil Fuel Consumption for Electricity Generation by Year, Industry Type and State, using sheet 2018_Preliminary inside the spreadsheet.
Solar on the WEIM market [1][2], which (given more and more utilities joining) is more and more of the actual interconnected infrastructure within the WECC [3] -- including plants down south in CA, AZ, NV, NM.
The scenario to envision is that there will be times when solar is cheap enough to buy on the market that a hydro-heavy utility can ''reduce'' hydro generation during the day, and timeshift that same generation into later hours when solar drops off to sell it for profit.
A solar- or natgas-heavy, hydro-poor utility (e.g. San Diego Gas & Electric [5], NV Energy [6][7]) can't do the same, they have to invest in storage, buy power from elsewhere (where the exact source is abstracted away), or spin up more natgas at peak times. The latter two are the most popular solutions now, but regulations in California are now forcing [4] the first issue in CA.
Not being cynical but genuinely curious: Is that rate of price decrease (15%) expected to keep up in the near/medium term? Is there any sort of Moore's law for battery cost?
It’s called the manufacturing learning curve, it was discovered in the 1940s relating to WWII aircraft production, and it’s not a special property of semiconductors. Just somehow “Moore’s Law” got popularized in the press.
No other technology stayed on as steep an exponential improvement curve for 60 years in the way semiconductors did. They were, in fact, quite remarkable.
I think transistors were unique in that we had/have a serious ability to consume more of them. Compuers are half price?!! I'll take three.
When the price of computing halved, we consumed more than twice as much, so that the industry still grew. Most other products/industries didn't have that kind of demand curve. Eventually, we had enough textile and we were happy to pay less for more (rather than pay more for way more). The textile industry stopped growing and learning/price reduction slowed too.
When the price of computers dropped, we paid the same for more powerful computers and more people decided to buy computers because the computers were now more useful. When compuers got powerful enough that we started paying less per computer, we still bought more computers in the form of ipods, VR goggles and smart toilets.
More demand, more production, more learning, lower price...question: If the product is cheaper, will you spend more or less in total? If the answer is "yes," rinse and repeat until the anser is no.
When people learned how to use coal more efficiently in 19th century England, that didn't result in less coal being used. It meant that it became economical to do more things with coal, and overall coal consumption increased.
If you consider the potential long term demand, the battery market is facing an increadible growth too. The current electric car production is below 1 Million/year, that is about 1% of the total car production, so the market for batteries for electric cars alone can grow about 100x, not counting in that the capacity per car might also grow (perhaps not much over the 100kWh for the top Teslas, but in average probably over 60kWh/car).
On top of that come all the new usages for batteries, especially energy storage, be it for individual houses or on the grid scale.
So potential market capacity is for long time no limitation for batteries. The unique thing of the semiconductor market development was though, that the chips grew in capabilities, but very little in size.
This can be explained by the incredible applicability (and thus demand from business and opportunity creation). We literally had nothing alike before and then suddenly we could do so much more.
Moore's law was always partly an economic phenomena - that companies figured things would improve by x per year and so invested accordingly to keep up with their competitors. I imagine something similar will happen with batteries. It relies on there being a lot of demand to fund the investment but I think that will be the case here - indeed battery spend per year will probably pick up as they become more practical for cars and grid use. These things can end or morph as you hit limits from the laws of physics as is happening with Moore's law but there seems a way to go with batteries.
Then another 25 years from the 262 do the 737, then twice as many years from the 737 to the 737 MAX. I always think of aviation when someone tries to extrapolate technology.
(PS: imagine the bold branding experiment if they had called it "50 years anniversary edition" instead of "MAX")
Reminds me of the B-52, which first flew less than 50 years after the Wright Flyer, but will have been flying for about a hundred years by the time it is retired. Feels like we haven't really fundamentally changed aviation technology since the early days, just incremental improvements in materials.
Even supersonic flight was common by the 1950's. The obvious breakthroughs from here, like hypersonic flight, have been achievable but expensive and not worth it since the 1970's or so.
Prices of commodities tend to asymptotically approach the cost of their inputs in a free market. When I was into it a few years ago, I recall hearing the materials cost was about 3% of the cost the batteries and the energy requirements of production are low, so perhaps there's still about 15-20 years of 15% price reductions?
Over the next decade, solid-state lithium batteries will likely become commercialized. That should provide enough headroom to keep the improvements going for quite a while.
Standard manufacturing and scale improvements should keep things going for several more years, even without a major change to chemistry.
the new solid state lithium batteries being developed are pretty astounding. i think i saw a video of a phone being powered by one, then the demonstrator cuts the battery in half while the phone is being powered by it and nothing happens -- the phone stays on.
could have been video trickery but I think the demo was legit. Once that technology goes mainstream it's gonna be as revolutionary as the increases in lithium ion energy density. We're on the cusp of some incredible battery breakthroughs in the very near future! The fact that the new tesla roadster (admittedly expensive at $250k) has a 600 mile charge capacity is aboslutely astonishing.
oh interesting. definitely not the video i remember seeing, but that demonstrates the same thing very well, and makes me more confident that the previous video I saw was legit. thanks for sharing!! The cutting action happens around 32:07 for anyone wanting to watch
Moore's law is a (awesome) example of what economists call "learning curve" specifically for transistors. Generally, economists model unit cost as Y and cumulative unit volume as X.
The industrial revolution was all about learning curves. Production grew, got better, leading to lower prices, leading to more demand, more production, more learning, lower prices, more demand... untill everyone had as many forks, socks and radios as they wanted.
But... Moore's law is usually represented as price over time instead of units. Half the unit cost every 18 months.
Early-ish in the tesla days elon went on a sort of rant. I think underlying it is/was this difference between "x as unit volume" or "x as time." "Time" made technologists think of learning curves in semi-supernatural terms. They either exist or they don't.
Moore's law was so consistent for so long, we just viewed it as a constant, but traditional economists would say it was/is a function of all the computers that got produced. Elon would say it's a function of hard work at intel, etc.
The upshot is the same though. As more batteries are made, more people work on battery manufacturing methods & R&D, the price declines.
There's no guarantee that it'll be proportional to volume but... new energy tech (batteries, solar, EVs) is now crossing price-parity thresholds in all sorts of applications (like grid power). That means more demand, more learning, lower prices, more demand.
Lead Acid batteries are extremely recyclable. Li-Ion batteries aren't setup for it yet but that'll come, however in the future many grid batteries are second-life (e.g. former automotive batteries that don't hold their full capacity) so they're recycled without energy input (except transportation.
The problem with your question wasn't stupidity. It was the disingenuous and trollish way that you presented the question.
Socratic learning is definitely a thing, but it's mostly philosophical. In this case, you are asking a question that is presented in a way that suggests that using batteries defeats the goal of creating renewable energy. However, you did not present any studies, news, or any other information, to bolster this idea.
This logically fallacious tool is used a lot nowadays. If you believe that batteries are not green, prove it. Otherwise, why pose a researchable question in the first place?
I figured it was interpreted that way. But it was a genuine question and I thought the question had merit on its own.
I wouldn't think many would come to defend batteries, that they are awful for the environment isn't a controversial idea. They do however enable things like electric cars and such, which arguably make them worthwhile.
And there are also other applications for batteries, such as even out supply and demand in the grid. But that doesn't really require them to be that environmentally friendly themselves to make sense for the environment - since they might enable more solar power etc.
But as energy storage for the sake of just storing it? It might be worthwhile for a household (perhaps mainly because selling the surplus electricity often isn't a good deal). And the economics might even be worthwhile on larger scale as well. But is it really environmentally friendly?
This comment is more in line with what I'd expect, and in response I would imagine that well-managed battery systems probably are pretty low in carbon and other pollution outputs as long as they can be recycled, or based on the amount of life that they can have in them.
Regardless, I can't imagine that a renewable energy + battery system is capable of doing anywhere near the environmental damage of most carbon-based systems.
Hydroelectric power supplied 60% of net electricity generation in Idaho in 2017. If a large share of it were pumped storage hydro, that would be very helpful for a 100% renewable target (free electricity storage to replace batteries).
You don't need pump storage when you have 60% hydro, all you need is to change the rate of production. When the sun shines so the shops run out of sunscreen and facebook explodes with complaints you go down to 20% hydro, when the situation is the opposite and facebook explodes with complaints, you go up to 100% hydro (both numbers totally fudged of course).
Pumped storage is for managing peak demand - you can go from zero to huge amounts of power very very quickly and avoid using the expensive and polluting standby by capacity.
Pumped storage is just hydro, with the ability to replenish the reservoir artificially. If you have sufficient natural flow there's no need to pump anything into it.
The idea of pumped storage being for reserved for peak demand comes from the typically limited size of artificial reservoirs making it such that it can only be used for peak demand.
I don't see how that follows. Hydroelectric power use doesn't destroy water. Minus some evaporation, all water upstream makes its way downstream whether the gravitational potential energy is converted to electricity or wasted like normal.
When building a dam, there's a temporary and arbitrarily small reduction in downstream flow as the reservoir is accumulated, but the more significant issue is usually permanent upstream flooding.
Regardless, my understanding is that Idaho is planning to increase its use of solar to make its way to 100%, with hydro being used to balance the supply-demand discrepancy. I would expect any hydro capacity to already be fully utilised on a long term basis.
It doesn't destroy the water, but it does destroy the flow. More hydroelectric power generation upstream means less use of the river downstream, because it's been pacified into a long pond. This is an area of serious contention in many places, particularly where rivers cross national boundaries.
> wasted like normal
But the river flow is not normally wasted. Everyone along a river uses it. In particular, if you're willing to assume (correctly) that generating hydroelectric power in Idaho drains gravitational potential energy out of the river -- in Idaho -- then it immediately follows that the people downstream won't be able to generate hydroelectric power from the river, because the energy was all drained out in Idaho. Which is what I said in the first place.
(1) River flow is an ecological issue, as underflowing or surge flowing a river has devastating consequences to everything living in it. This is usually what's fought over (example: TN-GA-AL-FL legal battles).
(2) Gravitational potential energy is not something that can be depleted in the way you're talking about. If Idaho is at 3,000 ft above sea level, whether or not they build a hydro dam doesn't impact the ability of Washington or Oregon to build hydro dams at lower elevations.
> Gravitational potential energy is not something that can be depleted in the way you're talking about. If Idaho is at 3,000 ft above sea level, whether or not they build a hydro dam doesn't impact the ability of Washington or Oregon to build hydro dams at lower elevations.
Gravitational potential energy is depleted when anything's elevation lowers. In rivers as in everything else, it is converted to other forms of energy. In rivers, that is kinetic energy. This is depleted in the normal way by harvesting it as "hydroelectric power".
Building a hydroelectric dam at 3,000 feet won't impact the ability of Oregon to build one at 0 feet and get 3,000 feet worth of river energy. But rivers flowing through Idaho started out with more than 0 energy (they're flowing!), which would also have been available for Oregon to use.
Idaho's gain is Oregon's loss. They can't drain Oregon to literally 0 energy extractible from the river, but they can come close.
Idaho is not sending the water into Oregon at any lower elevation because they added a dam and a hydro-plant upstream!
Hydro plants don’t harvest the ambient kinetic energy because the terminal velocity of the water is quite low! You can’t build a hydro plant at 0ft elevation, even if that water just flowed down a 10,000ft mountain.
A hydro plant takes a specific localized elevation drop and turns that drop into power by harvesting the gravitational mass of the water to rotate turbines installed along the way.
The water at the top entrance to the hydro plant is sitting perfectly still in a reservoir built to feed the plant.
If you tried to put a turbine at the bottom of a fast flowing river it wouldn’t work. You need the weight (mass) of millions of tons of water pushing directly down on your turbines to generate the necessary power.
Now here’s a fun thought. All that potential energy in the water at the top of the mountain, that potential energy got into the water when it evaporated from the surface and raised up into the atmosphere. So really it’s all just another form of solar power.
Which hypothetical river contains more energy when it reaches Oregon?
- A river that came from 8,000 feet
- A river that came from 3,000 feet
Oregon potentially has access to energy that Idaho cannot extract from the river, by virtue of Idaho's higher elevation. But any and all energy that Idaho does extract from the river is energy that would otherwise have been available downstream. Again, all gains to Idaho are losses to Oregon. The reverse is not true: Oregon enjoys some minor gains which are not losses to Idaho.
The potential energy in the water at the top of the mountain gets eaten away as it flows downstream whether there is a hydro dam or not, due to the massive friction of the water flowing downstream.
This is what I mean by terminal velocity of the river. The water does not just keep speeding up and speeding up as it flows downstream.
At first the water starts to flow faster, and indeed it is converting potential energy into kinetic energy. But as the water starts to flow, the kinetic energy starts getting sucked out through massive amounts of friction in the flow. Ever hear a river roaring? That’s the audio track of massive amounts of kinetic energy draining out into the surrounding earth. (A frictionless river would flow silently)
As the water keeps speeding up as it flows downstream it reaches a point where the friction is costing as much energy as the elevation drop is adding. Terminal velocity. At that point, every foot of elevation drop keeps the river flowing but does not increase net kinetic energy in the river.
Take one kilogram of water and pour it down a chute at the top of a 100 foot high drop.
Take another kilogram of water and pout it down a 200ft high chute. A 1,000ft high chute.
At the bottom of the chutes we measure the speed of the water. You will find the water is flowing at exactly the same speed in all three cases. Why?
For a typical hydroelectric dam, kinetic energy is not particularly important (although smaller kinetic hydroelectric plants do exist). The relevant factors are pressure (determined by the hydraulic head) and volumetric flow.
In ideal conditions, if you have two sections of identical pipe, and a turbine in the middle, water flowing through the pipe will not change velocity (incompressible fluid, and none is gained or lost), yet the turbine can harvest one Joule per cubic metre per Pascal of pressure.
This is the predominant principle by which a dam works; it creates a large pressure differential, and then drives a turbine at a relatively much slower velocity than the maximum possible by converting all the GPE to KE.
To adapt this to your chutes idea. Water will not pour down the longer chute significantly quicker than the shorter one, yet if you fill them, the longer chutes will have a proportionately larger pressure at the bottom. Thus a flow of 1m^3/s will deliver proportionately more energy across a turbine which reduces the pressure to ambient.
> But any and all energy that Idaho does extract from the river is energy that would otherwise have been available downstream.
This is false. Huge portions of that kinetic energy are going to be lost to transfer, heat, and sound if it is not captured by Idaho.
> Which hypothetical river contains more energy when it reaches Oregon?
Assume a spherical cow...
In order for any of your claims to be true, your 'rivers' would have to be straight, frictionless channels.
To know the actual impact on flow you would have to measure it. It is possible the flow will be reduced. But this is irrelevant for energy generation, since it is the gravitational potential that is being harvested[0]. Any kinetic energy coming into the system from upstream is dissipated when it reaches the reservoir.
[0] - Yes, step 1 is to convert the gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy, so you can be pedantic and say you are actually harvesting kinetic energy. However, this is not the kinetic energy in the pre-existing flow.
In your world, a river would be flowing at a speed of 132 m/s (= 295 mph) after coming from 3000 ft [1]. Now compare this to rivers in the real world and you will see that you're overlooking a factor which reduces the speed of the flow by two orders of magnitude.
[1] Potential energy of 1 kg water at 3000 ft: 1 kg * 900 m * 9.81 m/s² = 8829 J. Kinetic energy: 8829 J = 0.5 * 1 kg * v² ==> v = 132.88 m/s
This is not how it works. The dam in Oregon (or anywhere) doesn’t work on kinetic energy from the flow. In fact it often is stopping the flow (dissipating the kinetic energy) entirely.
The elevation drop that matters is from the top of the dam to the bottom of the damn.
Doesn’t matter a whit whether the water that falls that 500’ has previously come from 1000’ or 10,000’.
> The elevation drop that matters is from the top of the dam to the bottom of the dam.
> Doesn’t matter a whit whether the water that falls that 500’ has previously come from 1000’ or 10,000’.
Depends what you're counting. As you say, stopping the river entirely dissipates its accumulated flow. If you're downstream, then such a dam would lose you much more energy in the case where the water had originally come down 10,000' than in the case where it had originally come down 1,000'. The energy harvested usefully is the same, but the energy wasted is very different. And the total, the energy removed, is also very different.
I'll note, though, that a dam that completely stops the flow of the river is producing zero energy. (And also, about to cause a flood somewhere.) You only get energy by letting water through, and slowing it while it goes.
I'm gonna guess that there's no significant impact on the kinetic energy of the river very far downstream. There's constant resistance and it's at a relatively low speed. Think of how quickly the river wouldn't be a river anymore if gravity suddenly ceased - it's virtually all potential energy being converted and lost to the surrounding environment and turbulence constantly. I would bet a lot of money that if you measured the kinetic energy in Oregon, you would find no statistical significance before and after a dam is built in Idaho.
Gravitational potential isn’t something magic in the water. It loses the same amount of potential going from 3000ft to 2000ft whether there are 0 dams or 10 dams generating in the middle.
This is a sensible phrasing to use, but in that case you shouldn't say the dam harvests gravitational potential energy; you should say it harvests kinetic energy. The kinetic energy is just gravitational potential energy from somewhere else.
No, you don't pump anything. You just vary the flow rate. The flow is never going to less than 50% (and the load isn't either.)
Overall the flow management (at least with our dams in the Cascades) is more about making sure the reservoir doesn't overflow or dry up than it is about making sure that the river doesn't run dry. There's a huge amount of snowpack that builds up every winter, even with the glaciers receding over the past 50 years.
> Overall the flow management (at least with our dams in the Cascades) is more about making sure the reservoir doesn't overflow or dry up than it is about making sure that the river doesn't run dry.
So what? I didn't say anything about the river running dry. What are you responding to?
Most of the water still moves down stream. You only pump upstream while the sun is out _and_ you have spare capacity from solar. Essentially you use the reservoir on the top of the dam as a battery. You charge it up when you have extra energy capacity.
I'm curious. If you have 60% hydro, you have a lot of water coming into the reservoirs from snow melt. Why would you bother with pumping up more water from below?
There's rarely ever enough water coming from upstream to counter the huge amount of water that gets dumped during peak energy consumption hours. If you've got extra grid power left over that's not being used during trough hours and it's not used to refill the reservoir, or stored in some other way (lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen gas production etc.) it's just going to go to waste.
That doesn't apply to the present subject though; Idaho uses mostly snow, and for a reservoir that buffers most of a winter's snow, a day's peak/trough energy consumption is a rounding error.
They might not be able to change production quickly enough in hydro plants to serve daily demand peaks, or the peaks might be higher than the total produced amount from the 60% hydro.
For river health, you need to maintain roughly even outflows. Too much release results in flooding, and too little will dry up the river. But even outside of those extremes, you can have issues where high outflows inundate levies, followed by reduced outflows that lower the river, causing the soaked levies to collapse into the river. There are also fishery-health issues to consider.
How much of an issue this is depends on what the situation is downstream; some damns have afterbays that can moderate these changes quite well, while others do not and are less able to rapidly change outflows like this.
Basically, you might need to do some significant upgrades before you can use your hydro 'on demand' like this.
Pumped storage can't contribute to net electricity generation, so all 60% has to be from regular hydro. Unless I misunderstand what is meant by "net" here.
You seem right, but maybe they mean some of the currently "regular" hydro would be converted to pumped hydro[0], allowing for storage & smoothing of other renewable energy sources.
[0] most dams are not suitable for conversion[1], but some can be e.g. France's Bissorte was converted from the original 75MW gravity dam to a 750MW pumped hydro station in the 80s.
[1] at least not without gigantic work to create a discharge reservoir from nothing
That was my initial thought, but the double 'still' made me wonder. The idea that Idaho (or 'here') was the litmus test for going renewables made me wonder if parent might not be in Idaho (or the last great renewable energy site).
There are 62 companies that have an address matching 515 N 27th St Boise, ID 83702.
The companies are Helm Pv Solar One LLC, Tumbleweed Energy LLC, Grand View Solar Pv One, Life After The Fire Inc, Acc LLC, Thompson River Co Gen LLC, Richardson Investments LLC, Farm 2 Market LLC, Grand View Pv Solar One LLC, Mcomm LLC, Meadow View Investment Properties LLC, Alternative Power Development Northwest LLC, Bubba Gump Algae LLC, Pleasanton Property LLC, Global Trade Consulting Services LLC, Ameci Coffee Wine Bar, Earth Paw LLC, Solutionssite Inc, One Eighty Networks Inc, Best Buddies LLC, Occasionz Party Store LLC, Idaho Farm Energy Association Inc, Just Horse Inn Around LLC, Postural Integrity LLC, Clpr Investments LLC, Helm Pv Solar One LLC, Grand View Pv Solar Four LLC, Grand View Pv Solar Three LLC, Lhn LLC, Lifelong Learning Academy LLC, Orem Family Wind LLC, Mariah Wind LLC, Gonzalez Gonzalez LLC, Ch Property Services LLC, River Time Yoga LLC, B4dc Freight LLC, Hammerhead Enterprises LLC, Jerrod LLC, Ies Language Foundation LLC, Grand View Pv Solar Five A LLC, Magic Dirt LLC, Black Sands Solar, Black Sands Solar A, Jackpot Solar North LLC, Overton Solar LLC, Jackpot Solar South LLC, Jackpot Solar East LLC, Jackpot Solar West LLC, Carter Solar One LLC, Jackpot Solar 2 I LLC, Jackpot Solar 2 Ii LLC, Jackpot Solar 2 Iii LLC, Jackpot Solar 2 Iv LLC, Jackpot Solar 2 V LLC, Franklin Energy Storage Four LLC, Franklin Energy Storage One LLC, Franklin Energy Storage Three LLC, Franklin Energy Storage Two LLC, Jackpot Solar Annex LLC, Franklin Solar LLC, Jackpot LLC, and Jackpot Holdings LLC.
The sign outside the address, which is a small single family home, announces a law office.
This particular law office has been filing lawsuits against the Idaho power company for over a decade.
The Jackpot etc LLCs seem to connect to an alias out of Nevada.
There's various information on these entities in a variety of places but no one's put together a really complete picture. Here's some interesting background from three years ago:
That's not surprising -- those companies are all using their attorneys for registered agent services, and the law firm states that they specialize in energy companies -- both transactions and litigation.
It appears that the developers of solar projects follow the same pattern of real-estate developers: each project gets its own LLC, which allows them to contain any potential liability for the project, as well as sell ownership interests in the LLC to raise the funds for the project.
Per your linked article (and easily confirmable through public records), the Jackpot* series are all projects of Robert Paul of Alternative Power Development who has been quoted in the Idaho press about solar for the last decade.
> each project gets its own LLC, which allows them to contain any potential liability for the project
Interesting. That's a great idea for any fixed time + capital intensive projects. Keeps the structure, ownership, and responsibilities clean for a small amount of legal/paperwork.
>Each property is its' own LLC to minimize potential liability/risk.
The individual SVP structure for rental properties is primarily used to avoid land sale taxes. Sell the shares, not the building/land etc. to benefit from a different tax regime.
What point are you trying to make? Isn't it pretty common behavior for a developer to register individual LLCs for separate projects to minimize liability? And wouldn't it make sense for a solar developer to work with a law office that has experience with that particular regulatory landscape?
This is a rather misleading title, the article is about a single company (Idaho Power), not the state of Idaho.
The state still gets ~33% of its electricity from out of state, mostly from coal plants. In terms of overall energy, the state uses more than 3 times as much energy from fossil fuels as it generates from hydro, by the looks of it more natural gas based energy is used for heating than hydro is used for power. Unless my math is off the solar plant is question represents 0.077% of the states energy usage.
The greatest strength of technology is the exponential gains in capability at constant cost over time, or alternatively the exponential decrease in cost over time for the same capability.
Sometimes that exponential gain gets partially squandered to provide for greater productivity or lower cost development or marketing gimmicks or tiny little improvements in the fringe UX which can offer subtle delights.
Other times the product is something constant and perfectly standardized like MWs or kWh (generation or storage of energy) and we can sit back as a society and watch the prices fall, fall, fall.
The endgame is abundant electricity at a fraction of the ecological cost used pervasively to power every aspect of the economy.
Electric cars aren’t sci-fi anymore. Now we dream of flying through electrical power alone, which is about as ostentatious as it gets.
It’s perhaps not the popular opinion on HN, and obviously a lot is at stake, but this is the making of the carbon-neutral economy, and it’s being done in a technologically and market driven approach that doesn’t involve trillions of dollars of taxes or regulatory burden.
I do not believe it will prove to be too little or too late. I absolutely believe that technologies will continue to evolve and be discovered that allow us to move our global ecological impact from the red (deficit) to the green (surplus) and in the very long term from a political sense, but in the blink of an eye for our planet, this 21st century panic will seem really quite overblown.
It’s crucially import for people to care. For people to dream up new ways to stop damaging the planet and even heal the planet. I just think time and again we underestimate human ingenuity and overestimate calamity.
Global climate [change] indeed impacts millions of people every year and carries a massive economic cost. I have absolute faith in the scientists and the inventors to constantly push us toward a healthy, clean, efficient, and abundant future.
I am hopeful the same way you are. But nobody should ignore the fact that current developments in solar panel prices were heavily driven by government policy. Unguided market forces may get there eventually, but we don't have enough time for "eventually". (And we certainly don't have any time for misguided plans that actually try to subsidize carbon emissions, which is a big chunk of our current policy.)
The government subsidies for solar (themselves not without controversy) are great examples of how we can nudge resources to be applied to areas with the greatest positive externalities.
Government absolutely has a crucial role to play. Government works best when it can offer $1 of incentive to entice $9 of private investment. We have to be very careful of proposals that work the other way around.
For example the EV tax credit offered up to $7,500 tax credit for someone to spend on average let’s say $50k on an electric car. $1 of subsidy incentivized $6.66 of spending. But to make that car someone actually wanted to buy, automakers spent many billions in R&D up front, which was also incentivized by the EV tax.
The EV tax credit is estimated to cost about $7.5 billion once all the major automakers have entered the market and sold their share (200,000) of vehicles. I’m not sure if we got a 1:10 ratio, but it’ll be in that ballpark.
This credit made particular sense because it leveraged the technology curve by allowing scale-up to occur in the face of the prohibitively high cost of batteries which now have come down to the point where EVs can be sold profitably without the subsidy. I don’t think we’d be looking at $100/kWh for the batteries without that subsidy.
this model works great and can solve all kinds of problems. Rather than investing directly in companies like solyndra, incentivize public sector investment with tax incentives but also X-prize style awards for achieving major milestones.
For example 10 million to whomever can come up with a system to reliably educate inner city kids, reduce homelessness, reduce drug use, violent crime, etc.
I disagree with this. We’ve been told throughout the past 50 years that we “only have 10 more years to fix x.” And every single time the end of the world failed to arrive as scheduled. The sense of extreme urgency is nothing more than politics: an attempt to scare people into demanding a shift in the ownership of the means of production to fit political goals rather than environmental ones. A thought experiment: if capitalism could solve the climate tomorrow and BP and Exxon were at the forefront of it, would AOC and friends support it? Of course not. The only “solution” that crowd cares about is one that involves pure socialism which calls into question their actual commitment to the environment. It appears that improving the environment is being used as a means rather than an end: our fear of environmental calamity seemingly obfuscates our memory of the lack of freedom under Soviet styles of government.
If protecting the environment would stop serving as a dog whistle for anti-capitalism, then we’d could make a lot more progress on actually improving the environment.
I don't think your premise is correct. There have indeed been a lot of environmental scares (ozone layer, acid rain, ..., which were fortunately fixed with international effort), but mainstream climate science has if anything been far too conservative. For example, we're at the upper end of climate model ensembles from just ten years ago.[0]
they believe in socialism as a means to an end not an end in and of itself. If you can achieve what they would like to achieve (elimination of suffering) by some other means, I suspect they would be open to it.
I personally think they have the wrong goals and that inequality and suffering are what drive people to become better and achieve.
> I do not believe it will prove to be too little or too late. I absolutely believe that technologies will continue to evolve and be discovered that allow us to move our global ecological impact from the red (deficit) to the green (surplus) and in the very long term from a political sense, but in the blink of an eye for our planet, this 21st century panic will seem really quite overblown.
But it is too late already, by many metrics.
The paths that lead us to 3-4 degrees of warming do take into account technological progress, energy efficiency improvements, petrol price hikes and so forth.
There is no "moving from red to green" on the biodiversity loss. That took millions of years to build.
Technology might save us from going back to pre-industrial revolution, but won't make the future "abundant", at least not for all of us.
There's no denying that a major part of the US population will make it through this century. They are not the ones whose life is at stake here.
Curious of the politics that has folks in Idaho talking so warmly about renewable energy. If you believe the national news, all red states want to keep burning coal. Curious about the background here.
The Idaho legislature is totally dominated by farmers (I mean this literally: The Idaho congressmen are primarily farmers.). These farmers are allowed way better deals on hooking up solar and providing it to the grid than city consumers. In addition, a large number of farmers already have solar panels since grid hookups are very expensive.
The "California arbitrage" has been very profitable for Idaho for many years: This involves selling California renewable hydro, for which they pay a premium, and buying coal from Utah to replace it. (Ever driven north of SLC to Idaho on I-15? Those high voltage transmission lines are there for a reason.)
If I had to bet, I would suspect the lines from the Nevada coal plant also supply California, and Idaho Power will sell the solar production there.
Even if nobody does the pumped hydro scam, green energy is often sold twice: once locally, where people know the energy they use comes from clean sources, and once somewhere else where customers pay a premium for a certificate stating that the energy they use was pretend-swapped with a place where the local supply is clean.
Nobody in Norway will ever consider their Tesla coal powered because someone in Germany had their utility buy the hydro bragging rights off the Norwegian utility, but the German driver will happily believe the illusion that someone in Norway is responsible for the coal use, thanks to a tiny premium he paid on his energy bill. And it's not even quite as bad as it sounds, because that tiny premium does indeed influence the market dynamic in favor of green energy, it's just not quite as clean as the on-paper-swap would make it seem. That Norwegian who benefits from his utility selling off green bragging rights will never be tempted to outbid the German for that certificate, because the facts of energy provenance are on his side no matter what.
It's true that there aren't really such things as "green electrons" in a vastly interconnected grid. And it's true that my "60% Green" plan often gets to that 60% with REC's purchased from a renewable plant half a continent away that any reasonable analysis would tell you the raw "electrons" or "energy" doesn't really reach me.
But you make it sound like there's some double-spend accounting going on. I thought that RECs had to be tied to the output... if Norway sells some hydro RECs to Germany, the electrons may not technically reach the German driver (it doesn't quite work like that), but they did have to at least leave Norway in a way that the Norwegians can't count them in their own consumption.
I know energy markets are the most complicated beasts out there, but can you explain how this sold-twice accounting works in more detail?
I think you misunderstood (or I misformulated): I'm not accusing Norway of selling more certificates than they should, I'm saying that the buyers of the actual "green electrons" won't feel the tiniest bit dirtier from the certificates having been sold. The "double spend" would be virtually clean (from a certificate) plus actually clean (but with the certificate sold).
It boils down to the question wether this is true or not:
> but they did have to at least leave Norway in a way that the Norwegians can't count them in their own consumption
This reads as if Norway could only sell certificates for surplus energy they exported (sans certificate), but I think they can sell certificates for as much green energy as they produce, virtually downgrading their own consumption to coal/gas/whatever energy source is greenified with the certificates. Of course it would hurt their on-paper emissions, but who would honestly care about those when you know that in reality you are clean?
Ah, lemme see if I get this now. So the REC certifies 1MWh of clean energy was produced. It doesn't matter where it was consumed (that's kinda a nonsensical question anyways), but only the holder of the REC can count it.
You're saying the Germans feel good (and paid a premium) for the Norwegian RECs certifying a few MWh's of clean energy were produced somewhere... the Norwegians can't count the RECs in their accounting (so they're "dirty" in official stats), but they don't care because although you can't point to individual green electrons, they know their grid is green whether the accounting says it or not.
So the "double-spend" is the Germans get the official credits because they paid for them, but the Norwegians don't care about the accounting and self-count themselves as green.
"If you believe the national news"... there in lies the crux of the issue.
Have we not all learned by now that large media is merely playing for click-bait and sensationalism at this point and can not be trusted?
Aside from 3 years I have lived in various conservative states. The push for coal is not by the populace but by the $$$ being donated by various groups. Please note I have not lived in a coal producing state. I am sure in those states the desire is for coal as it equals jobs. Yet they are a minority.
Isn’t that a straw man though? The media hasn’t even hinted at Idaho being into coal, heck, reading the paper or watching CNN one would think that no one used coal west of the Mississippi (when in reality Wyoming is a big coal user). If you didn’t...study it in school you wouldn’t even know how much hydro California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho had. Or maybe you simply didn’t care, because how is that information even useful to you?
There is also a term when purposely describing the media as misleading in a misleading way.
Well that highlights that they lack an economic interest in it. Except nearly everywhere that applies - mid-tier restuarants like Arbies are bigger than the coal issue yet so many declare coal their hill to die on as some sort of symbol.
Just a guess here, but most people don't realize how pristine and beautiful it really is here. The reason I mention that is, outdoor activities like hunting fishing, camping, boating, etc. are a huge part of people's lives here. We have massive areas of protected wilderness.
My point is, as conservative as it is here, I think even our conservatives care more for the environment than average, because they spend a lot of time enjoying it.
It's a similar thing with wildlife. The avid hunters are often the biggest protectors of habitats. Same with fisherman and rivers and streams.
>how pristine and beautiful it really is here. The
Keep talking like that on the internet and it will rapidly take a turn for the worse.
Colorado used to be a lot like Idaho then it achieved a "brand image" as a vacation spot, after about a generation of people retiring to their vacation spot and people moving there because they can and the state is in a tailspin (being an early adopter on weed probably didn't help but that's beside the point). Now the cost of living is skyrocketing and Denver/Boulder seem to be hell bent on recreating all the bad (bad for people who aren't wealthy, that is) decisions of a certain west coast state.
Economy, people, natural environment, no place can be highly favorable to all three. You can make big bucks and enjoy nature all you want in CA but the rest of your life will be a rat race. You can live a nice life and make good money in some places on the east coast but god help you if you want to get outdoors once in awhile. There are still many highly rural states where you can enjoy nature and have a nice life but you won't be making big bucks there.
> Now the cost of living is skyrocketing and Denver/Boulder seem to be hell bent on recreating all the bad (bad for people who aren't wealthy, that is) decisions of a certain west coast state.
This is the net result of asset inflation. The North East and California got rich via big-bank (Federal Reserve and Wall St) driven asset inflation. People are logically cashing out and moving to lower cost of living areas.
Another Idahoan here. Agreed. The outdoors here is very valued. Idaho also has a lot of hydroelectric generation which I think also counts are renewable?
Washingtonian here: they drill in the negative effects of hydro into our heads in high school civics class (but it’s primarily centered around fish). We still do it, but have began removing many of the older less productive dams in the state (eg on Elwa a few years back).
British Columbia has built about 125 new hydro plants in the last 30 years. The environmental studies take about 5 years and cost millions and employ many biologists and environmental specialists.
Negative effects can be mitigated if the plant is designed to take them in to account. Be it not changing flows and levels except very slowly to avoid stranding fish, keeping some water flowing past the intake structure to keep sediment moving, creating fish ladders, fish spawning channels, etc.
Hydro is really one of the least bad energy sources if you have to pick one.
Sure, for new dams. The ones built a hundred or more years ago are the ones with huge problems. Well, there is always a cost, the Columbia will never run free, for example.
There must be some solution to the huge problems. The entities operating and maintaining these old hydro electric facilities probably don't have the budgets to resolve the huge problems, but it is hard to believe the situation is so bad and so hopeless that we'd be better off removing all of the dams and installing natural gas turbines in their place.
The panhandle is cool like that (we used to go to priest lake a lot), southern Idaho reminds me more of Utah (a lot of scrub and irrigated farming going on).
Also Idahoan here - but not sure that matters. No doubt it is pristine and beautiful here. But this implies that "conservatives" don't care about the environment where it's not pristine and beautiful. I don't think that's the case. I think that financial realities will always win out and what is happening in Idaho is a sufficient government distortion of the market to make these other technologies financially workable.
The folks who don't care about the environment are not conservatives in general, but the big money that owns the corporations that do resource extraction and their employees, who happen to be mostly in conservative areas. Which gives a lot of people the wrong idea about conservatives.
Plus a few ideologues who idolize the free market and don't care about externalities. Which also gives people the wrong idea about conservatives.
Other people from Idaho are talking about the environment and I’m sure that’s a large part.
I’d also like to add from a government perspective a Idaho is a huge state with a small disperse population. It’s cheaper to have local energy generated from solar, than transporting power tens or hundreds of miles to a single house.
The news are driven by political interests. The actual investments are driven by potential for profit. Wind is big business in Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, for example. Texas alone generates more than a quarter of its electricity from wind, but you don't often hear local politicians bragging about it.
Thinking all conservatives are against green energy is a smear against conservatives. The debate is much more nuanced and to trivialize a complex issue conservatives generally think that the solution to the problem is through innovation and business investment rather than taxes and government action. As with most issues, I believe the solution is somewhere in the middle and after reading the news the other day where Florida is building the worlds biggest battery, it’s really great to see red states leading!
Agree. I lean conservative and generally feel that the market will find the best solutions. If solar is economically superior to coal then it will replace coal. We don't need government policies and tax incentives to make that happen.
How is the market going to account for externalities, such as climate change in the case of coal, without nudging from government policies or tax incentives (or anti-incentives)?
Because consumers want it. Consumers used to pay 50 cents for a cup of coffee. Now they pay $5. That didn't happen because of government nudging. It happened because a different demand was created.
A fancy $5 coffee drink looks, tastes, and smells different from a 50 cent cup of coffee.
A kilowatt hour of electricity that came from the dirtiest coal plant in the universe and a kilowatt hour of electricity that came from whatever the cleanest source is are completely indistinguishable when they come out of my sockets and go into my appliances.
True. But people are very aware of green branding in any form that it presents itself. Idaho's population growth was 2.1% in 2018, tying with Nevada for the highest in the country. I assume this is largely driven by similar population growth in Boise in the same period which was the highest in the top 100 cities in the US by population. I don't have data on this, but given what Moody's says is the demographic driving this (tech workers from the Bay Area and Seattle), I would think that all else being equal, this green image is a huge draw for the state.
And yet no conservatives seem to be clamoring to rescind oil subsidies or coal subsidies, but the raucous roar comes up at the Republican rallies when something is said about rescinding renewables and bringing back coal. It's literally the platform the President ran on. I don't think it's political to be able to say that the platform a party runs on is something that they support. Am I misunderstanding something here?
Well this gets into the domain of realpolitiks. As I understand it the platform was not to reinvigorate coal but rather remove targeted regulation that accelerated the collapse of those communities especially in West Virginia and buy them time to transition. I want to lead the world as much as everyone else, but people argue that a heavy green investment would be a self inflicted wound especially when places like China are the biggest polluters and are still outputting more CO2 and see the results of a gas tax in France that disproportionately affects rural communities. I want sustainable energy as much as everyone else on here does, but we need to transition responsibly as our debt is massive.
I'm sorry I'm jumping into a political argument, I'll try my best to stay on point.
From what I read about West Virginia, those communities were collapsing anyway, and what Obama administration did, is to try and support government programs for the former coal miners to learn new trades and get some financial support.
Based on this information, in my opinion this is not even realpolitik, its lying -- as in, knowing facts and then misrepresenting and misleading people; because of any number of reasons -- be that coal lobby, or what 'feels right' for the average voter rather then what happens in reality, and I don't know how to deal with that myself because this realization makes me feel anger.
The debate is hardly nuanced, the conservative party (the GOP, supported by almost all self-described conservatives) has been notoriously anti-environment, both tonally and in terms of actual policy.
Tonally: the conservative US President (supported, again, by almost all self-described conservatives) has said that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." He has called for an end to the "war" on "beautiful, clean coal".
This kind of anti-environment, pro-fossil fuel bombast isn't restricted to the clownish Trump. "Drill, baby, drill" is from the 2008 election cycle. Republicans have projected an attitude for decades in which dirty, polluting, environmentally destructive activities are seen as manly, powerful, patriotic, American; whereas environmental concerns are played down as trivial, wasteful, overblown, anti-American, effeminate.
Policy-wise, the GOP has supported drilling in ANWR, supported the Keystone XL pipeline, supported coal subsidies, opposed carbon caps, on and on and on. There's no nuance. The GOP has been on the wrong side of every environmental issue for years and years. We are one of the only countries in the world not part of the Paris climate accord.
Here is a long quotation from the RNC's 2016 platform. It barely even pays lip service to environmental concerns, instead harping constantly on the importance of extractive industries, the virtues of coal, etc. US conservatism is not nuanced about environmentalism, it's for the extractive industries and against the environmental concerns that sometimes get in their way.
"""
The Democratic Party does not understand that coal is an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource. Those who mine it and their families should be protected from the Democratic Party’s radical anti-coal agenda.The Democratic Party’s campaign to smother the U.S. energy industry takes many forms, but the permitting process may be its most damaging weapon. It takes an average of 30 days for states to permit an oil or gas well. It takes the federal government longer than seven months. Three decades ago, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) leased 12.2 million acres. In 2014, it leased only one-tenth of that number. Our nuclear industry, cleanly generating almost 20 percent of our electricity from its 99 plants, has a remarkable safety record, but only a handful of plants have been permitted in over three decades. Permitting for a safe, non-polluting hydroelectric facility, even one that is being relicensed, can take many years because of the current President’s hostility to dams. The Keystone Pipeline has become a symbol of everything wrong with the current Administration’s ideological approach. After years of delay, the President killed it to satisfy environmental extremists. We intend to finish that pipeline and others as part of our commitment to North American energy security. Government should not play favorites among energy producers. The taxpayers will not soon forget the current Administration’s subsidies to companies that went bankrupt without producing a kilowatt of energy. The same Administration now requires the Department of Defense, operating with slashed budgets during a time of expanding conflict, to use its scarce resources to generate 25 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2025. Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue. This is the triumph of extremism over common sense, and Congress must stop it. We support the development of all forms of energy that are marketable in a free economy without subsidies, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and hydropower. A federal judge has struck down the BLM’s rule on hydraulic fracturing and we support upholding this decision.
"""
Pretty tired of "conservatives" who are either not aware of or not willing to stand behind the policies of actually existing conservatism, or intentionally gaslighting.
I don't completely buy into the notion that conservatives here are conservationists. I think there definitely are some that are, but I think larger contributing factors are that we have an abundance of renewable energy (hydro, wind, and sun), low population, and a ton of federally-owned land.
We have so much hydro power that some of our dams aren't even owned by Idaho Power. For example, Lucky Peak Dam, which provides flood control for the Boise River and Boise, has a power plant there that is actually owned by Seattle City Light that provides 4% of Seattle's power (1).
Also, Idaho doesn't have a lot of fossil fuels to harvest (2), so this likely plays into lack of desire for coal. Mining in the north and agriculture in the south are our primary economic drivers.
In terms of the politics, our legislature this year just barely formed a committee to discuss climate change, but our governor did say it exists and is a problem, so who knows? I suppose I tend to think that our population's demand for electricity is no where near greater than our supply, which is why demand for coal isn't really there.
However, if someone from the outside wanted to install a coal power plant, I think conservatives here would easily support it. That may be my cynicism coming through, but I could easily see Trump advocating for it and then the freedom trucks with their freedom flags and freedom coal rolling exhausts would rally to support this.
The thing about coal here in Idaho is that there are very few reasons for conservatives to like it. There are no coal jobs here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying conservatives here are actually conservationists, I just mean that many of them tend to be more interested in the outdoors. I'm just basing that on people I know and encounter, so the sample size isn't huge.
Also, the weird thing about Idaho is that there are at least two, maybe three Idaho's. There is Eastern Idaho, who are largely extremely conservative farmers, then there is the Boise area, which relative to Eastern Idaho is less conservative. Then there is Northern Idaho, which I don't really know how to describe, but they don't fit either category.
I completely agree with you here on everything, I just think that conservatives here could easily get riled into supporting coal merely for political reasons. You're right, there's not a huge quantity of reasons to like it, but in our binary political culture, I could see them getting behind it.
I mean, we have Texas oil barons that are blocking access to public land in the McCall area that has really great hunting, but the Idaho legislators here opted not to pass legislation to help regular Idahoans have access. Why? Private property and individual rights were the big reasons I read, which clearly affects most Idahoans, but for some reason they didn't support them.
I searched a variety of archives and found exactly zero articles about the energy policy of Idaho in the last five years. Are you sure you didn't just ... make this up?
You might as well state that no republican is pro-renewables, and that would be dishonest as well. This binary labeling of people and states in order to franchise hate really has to come to a close. The moment any movement convinces you that someone is a single choice and not a human, you have failed.
completely agreed, and you are getting downvoted as well for no reason, the amount of brainwashing is astounding...
I am completely for solar and glad that solar is getting cheaper, it's a more environmentally friendly way of generating power and now it's also getting even cheaper, what's not to like, good for enviornment and the finances as well.. no real reason then for anyone not to support it
> If you believe the national news, all red states want to keep burning coal.
If you believed the national news for the last two years, you were presented with an unfounded conspiracy theory.
The U.S. is not the caricature. Republicans are human too. Nobody wants to rely on coal, but if you have a lot of it, you have a huge incentive to try to make it work.
There'll be the usual pro-fission claims from the anti-renewables taskforce I'm sure, but these kinds of stories continue to boost claims that we can move away from fossil+nostorage without any significant disruption.
They have 60% hydro there. It's not an especially useful data point in places where hydro is fully developed and accounts for a much smaller fraction of generation.
Hydro doesn't need pumping to provide load balancing. Just build more turbines [1] than you need for average load - then you can flow extra water overnight and less water during the day while keeping the average the same. This is then equal to the superposition of a traditional and PSH dam, but all in one footprint.
[1] Yes, extra turbines are expensive. But you'd need to build them anyways for a PSH facility.
Hydro's biggest issue is peak capacity in addition to possible ecosystem issues. Barring tidal generators they tend to be built up. I would question the "how" of being better. Durability I would certainly grant given the Hoover Dam it has worked for 83 years proving cheap power.
I'm not sure what you're asking for. Do you want hydro stations to pump water upwards when there is an energy surplus? What problems would that solve that a dam wouldn't?
Hydro is so great because water is easy to store as a reservoir. There is very little hydro generation that isn’t dammed (and most of that is for small scale local power generation).
Obviously. My favorite “subsidy” is the one where carbon combustion energy sources get to make the Earth literally unlivable for my kids & grandkids. I call it the “being alive” subsidy.
Does unsubsidized electricity even exist? Germany doesn't shutdown old coal plants although it can replace them with existing gas plants because the coal plants employ more people. Even Trump is supporting coal merely because it helps coal workers.
Idaho Power has been, for several years, planning to pull out as a partner from the 3 coal power plants it has an ownership share in: North Valmy in NV, Jim Bridger in WY, and Boardman in OR [2]. Jim Bridger will have soon been due for an expensive upgrade because of environmental regulations, Boardman has seen consistent pressure from Oregon activists and regulators to bring the shutdown date closer, and North Valmy has seen less and less use because the other owner has succeeded meeting most of the Northern Nevada demand with a robust mix of natgas and solar, but also has fresh interconnects with Southern Nevada and Idaho.
In 2018, Idaho Power also joined [3] the Western Energy Imbalance Market, which streamlines realtime energy trading in the WECC interconnect. As time goes on and coal plants are retired, coal's share will decline in the energy mix, and there will be an increasing amount of quasi-'baseload' solar available to buy in the energy market. And for the times in the day when the solar generation drops off and natgas plants would often be the next sellers, Idaho Power has plenty of its own hydro it can deploy to compensate. But note that despite their well-situated position with renewables, their target for 100% renewables is still 2045 -- relatively far off.
[1] (PDF) https://oemr.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/3.6.18-Energy-Land... [2] http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/sep/16/power-company-m... [3] https://www.idahopower.com/news/idaho-power-customers-will-b...