There is a section of the US Energy Information Administration website that I like to look at when I need some good news. This shows the planned additions and retirements in generation units for about the next 12 months. A few things to keep in mind are:
- These are for units in a generating plant, not the entire plant. Most plants have more than one unit.
- The color code is for type of fuel. Unfortunately there is not a color code for battery energy storage — something that I hope is changed. The gray dots called “other” in the planned additions image are mostly battery systems.
- The size of the dot gives an approximate size of the unit as shown in the lower right.
The first graphic shows the planned retirements. The dark brown are coal fired units and the light tan are natural gas. Those are some very big coal units set to retire but there are still several hundred more.
There is also one wind farm in southwestern Minnesota that is retiring. I suppose this shows that wind is a mature technology.
Now for the planned additions image. This is a happy image for me because it shows how much renewable energy is being added and much of this is going into states that previously had little or no renewables. My state of Wisconsin has been blank for many years and now there are several solar projects. The east coast from Virginia to Florida shows a growing number of solar installations (yay). Texas and California are booming as usual and even Indiana and Ohio are seeing lots of activity.
Of course it is not all good news. The lack of solar programs in the Southwest is absolutely painful. Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico should be covered in yellow dots. It’s no big surprise that West Virginia, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Wyoming are blank or nearly so. The deep red states seem to love burning fossil fuels.
The red dot is the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant in Georgia. There are two 1,100 MW units that are almost finished. These will likely be the last two nuclear commercial power units built in the USA.
That is what I look at about once a month to get a visual on where we are going with electrical power generation. What do you think?