Last time I heard about this Intermountain plant a few years ago, it was about the LADPW union being absolute assholes to do anything to keep it running.
Good riddance, be gone, coal is expensive and unreliable and it's mostly political manipulation to pick winners and losers that keeps it around. TVA is begging to be able to get rid of this coal plant which causes massive reliability problems:
The more impressive thing in my mind is that California has also reduced the use of natural gas by 37% since 2023 through the combination of solar + batteries.
> Key to making that shift has been the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has ordered less electricity from the Utah plant while simultaneously building a natural gas and hydrogen burning power station just across the street from Intermountain.
Does that mean that LA is building a plant in Utah?
Why not build the plant in LA? Is it more efficient to ship electricity instead of gas; or is it just more politically convenient to pollute Utah instead of LA?
Meanwhile over here in WV, we are saddled with above-market electricity rates thanks to our state (non-)regulatory commission and a desire to keep old coal-fired generators operating. It drives us nuts.
On a related note, I'm skeptical of the feasibility of their 2035 EV-only mandate. They haven't made any meaningful progress toward building up a grid that can support as much electrical power consumption as they will need. I know gasoline-powered cars are not going to disappear overnight, but the average American replaces their car about every 12-14 years according to Professor Google. Either that number is going to become 25-30 in California, or people will be heating their homes with peat and dry, fire-prone CA lumber.
I'll admit I have selfish interest in seeing nuclear power take over our electrical grids, but I don't want to see the lives of 40M people upended just because it will give the companies in my portfolio more pricing power.
EV mandates have one of the strongest divergences in opinion between the people whose job it is to run critical infrastructure and people commenting online.
Possibly some really effective bit of propaganda got released and no one fact checked it. The anti-EV lobby absolutely loved when California issued a standard demand warning a few years ago during a summer peak. I wonder if that's the cause?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 44.2 ms ] threadGood riddance, be gone, coal is expensive and unreliable and it's mostly political manipulation to pick winners and losers that keeps it around. TVA is begging to be able to get rid of this coal plant which causes massive reliability problems:
https://elibrary.ferc.gov/eLibrary/filelist?accession_number...
(Power is frequently generated and transported across state lines)
* https://www.threads.com/@1mzjacobson/post/DPjmVLcDqFo/impres...
> Key to making that shift has been the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has ordered less electricity from the Utah plant while simultaneously building a natural gas and hydrogen burning power station just across the street from Intermountain.
Does that mean that LA is building a plant in Utah?
Why not build the plant in LA? Is it more efficient to ship electricity instead of gas; or is it just more politically convenient to pollute Utah instead of LA?
I'll admit I have selfish interest in seeing nuclear power take over our electrical grids, but I don't want to see the lives of 40M people upended just because it will give the companies in my portfolio more pricing power.
https://calmatters.org/environment/2025/06/california-sues-t...
Possibly some really effective bit of propaganda got released and no one fact checked it. The anti-EV lobby absolutely loved when California issued a standard demand warning a few years ago during a summer peak. I wonder if that's the cause?