Those "eligible resources" are defined solely as coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, oil, and individual net metering.
The latter includes home solar or wind installations in which the owner feeds excess electricity back into the grid, and is paid a predetermined, fixed fee for the power.
But these small-scale sources of renewable energy are meant for private use. They just happen to produce extra power that can be utilized by the grid.
Utility-scale wind and solar farms are not included in the bill's list of "eligible resources," making it illegal for Wyoming utilities to use them in any way if the legislation passes.
And if you go back to the primary source[1], that is, W.S. 37-16-101(a)(viii), you can corroborate this, as "Net metering system" has restrictions such as:
7 (B) Has a generating capacity of not more
8 than:
9
10 (I) Twenty-five (25) kilowatts for a
11 residential facility;
12
13 (II) One (1) megawatt for a
14 nonresidential facility, if allowed by the electric
15 utility, but an electric utility may not disallow
16 nonresidential use equal to or less than twenty-five (25)
17 kilowatts.
And:
2 (E) Is intended primarily to offset part or
3 all of the customer-generator's requirements for
4 electricity
So the activists are right: this is effectively making it illegal to set up any large-scale wind or solar farm.
If any of you reading this live in Wyoming, please bring this up with your representatives. It's deliberately interfering with the free market in order to artificially inflate the value of coal by making it illegal to sell large-scale alternative energy sources, sponsored by representatives of coal-producing counties.
Fair enough. Though it makes it pretty unappealing to set up a renewable energy source in Wyoming, or even in the general vicinity of the state, if you can't actually sell to people or utilities nearby. At that point, the only good reason to set up a renewable energy plant within Wyoming is if you have some extremely good geographical/climate/geological reason to do so.
Note also that this bill also blocks geothermal energy, which I would expect should be pretty attractive as a source of energy for the home state of Yellowstone and Old Faithful.
Those "eligible resources" are defined solely as coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, oil, and individual net metering.
The latter includes home solar or wind installations in which the owner feeds excess electricity back into the grid, and is paid a predetermined, fixed fee for the power.
But these small-scale sources of renewable energy are meant for private use. They just happen to produce extra power that can be utilized by the grid.
Utility-scale wind and solar farms are not included in the bill's list of "eligible resources," making it illegal for Wyoming utilities to use them in any way if the legislation passes.
And if you go back to the primary source[1], that is, W.S. 37-16-101(a)(viii), you can corroborate this, as "Net metering system" has restrictions such as:
And: So the activists are right: this is effectively making it illegal to set up any large-scale wind or solar farm.If any of you reading this live in Wyoming, please bring this up with your representatives. It's deliberately interfering with the free market in order to artificially inflate the value of coal by making it illegal to sell large-scale alternative energy sources, sponsored by representatives of coal-producing counties.
[1]: http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2016/bills/SF0093.pdf