Historically, states have been legally in control of directing the sources of electric power production and the development of the delivery systems within their borders. As a result, the fight for reliable, affordable electricity is being fought state by state. The groups leading this fight in Indiana are Reliable Energy, Inc., and Hoosiers for Reliable Energy.
They have produced a new video, titled “There is a Storm Coming,” which points out policies which have led to the premature, rapid closure of reliable coal-fueled power plants in Indiana with their mandated replacement by wind and solar industrial facilities have resulted in rising electric power prices and reduced reliability. The video’s narrator says:
There is a storm coming. A storm that doesn’t allow our homes to be heated in the middle of winter or cooled on the hottest days of summer. A storm that will force Hoosiers to pay record prices to heat their homes and run their businesses.
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It’s not a matter of if this storm is coming, it’s a matter of when. Pay close attention to those who are quick to point fingers when the storm hits. You can expect them to call out Indiana’s reliable power sources as the reason for the storm. When they do, ask yourself “Why reliable power hasn’t failed us for the last 100 years?”
Using newspaper headlines and graphics developed from data gathered by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the video details the decline of coal-fueled power plants in the Indiana and the corresponding rise in energy prices and power failures.
For instance, the video points out, that as a result of policies that mandate, subsidize, and encourage the use of renewable power sources, a majority of the reliable baseload power plants in the state have been closed during the past decade, years before they were scheduled to shut down. As a result, electric power rates in Indiana went from being the fifth lowest in the nation in 2008, to being 27th lowest by 2019.
The implication of the video is clear, higher prices and increasing numbers of blackouts and brownouts can be expected if Indiana forces even more reliable coal-fueled power plants to shut down to be replaced with intermittent wind and solar. The video points to the chronic power failures in California each summer and the unexpected winter outage in Texas in 2021 as what the future holds for Indiana if policies continue along their present path.
It’s a direct, accurate message that real world experience in recent years shows applies to every state in the United States that pushes ever greater reliance on wind and solar power to the exclusion of traditional, reliable, baseload power sources.
Legislators, state public utility commissioners, and the public at large should watch this video and heed its message.
This is happening in a lot of places, even in Alberta, where one day in late December 2021 we came dangerously close to having a power shortage which at best would have resulted in rolling brownouts and at worst a collapse of our system when the temperatures were running around -30c or colder around the province.