Coal Plant Insolvency?

What Replaces Coal Plants After They Are Taxed To Insolvency

According to this recent article in Clean Technica, political and taxation pressures on coal fired plants could render more than half of the 347 Gigawatts of US coal power facilities insolvent.

In theory, large centralized renewable plants would replace these coal plants.

In reality, this replaces a large, inefficient, but reliable energy source with another large, inefficient but not so reliable one — And delivers it on a transmission grid that hasn’t changed significantly since the turn of the early 20th century.

As large commercial and industrial energy customers increasingly produce their own energy and deploy MicroGrids, smaller, clean and renewable plants will be located where energy is needed. If Utilities are to provide services and support to the growing demands of distributed generation plants and MicroGrids, a completely different approach to generation and transmission is required.

In reality, these political pressures only accelerate the insolvency of an antiquated Utility Industry — But are we taking steps to replace them with a better solution?