I know you don’t like reading MPSC cases so I took the liberty of doing it for you. And I found a pretty astonishing fact.
Detroit Edison was approved in August to contract for a new 120 MW wind farm called Tuscola Bay Wind where the wind energy will cost… wait for it… 6 CENTS!!
You may recall that our coal fleet costs around $.03 per kwh. Remember that those plants are on average over 50 years old. That means they are not all the most efficient or clean. In some cases, our utilities are making improvements in the plants, in some cases it makes sense to take them offline.
You may also recall that new coal is likely to cost no less than $.13 per kwh and check out this MPSC report if you want more detail.
Additionally, energy efficiency costs around $.03 per kwh. The best electron (for all of us other than those who do the generating and sell it) is the one we don’t use.
So what does this mean? It doesn’t mean the end of fossil fuels, we will likely have a diverse energy portfolio going forward for good reason. And some renewables are certainly intermittent.
Michigan manufactured turbines using advanced engineering deployed in Michigan harnessing Michigan wind instead of Appalachian or Wyoming imported coal sounds pretty good to me. And at that price, we can afford it.
