I had fun at the demonstration.

http://www.nbc12.com/story/17246780/hundreds-protest-at-dominion-va-power

One of those 220 people marching around the Dominion Virginia Power building in downtown Richmond VA was me. It rained all morning, dang it, or we probably would have had another 100 people there.

Why did we do it? Because Dominion, the electrical utility which services most of Virginia in a monopoly, is engaging in a bit of greenwashing. They are collecting money for their wonderful efforts in alternative energy, except that those efforts do not really exist. For the record, as a Dominion customer you can sign up for all alternative-sourced electricity. Uh huh, but if you do that, your electricity is going to be shipped in from wind turbines in Pennsylvania that are NOT operated by Dominion. See the problem?

In the news article, Dominion argues that they are going slow on Wind Power and Solar because they cost three times as much as coal or nuclear. That however is another lie. NEW Wind power costs three times as much as coal or nuclear sourced from OLD plants, yeah. But we are discussing the costs of building NEW plants, which always cost more than old plants. On that basis, Wind Farm power would cost around twice as much as coal, not 3 times as much. And Nuclear? Well, there are so many safety issues and it costs so dang much to build nuclear, that a wind farm would probably not cost much more than nuclear at all. Old nuclear, yeah that's cheaper, but NEW nuclear, maybe not. Alternative energy prices are heading down, and coal and nuclear costs are heading up. We are currently in the middle of a boom for natural gas in the USA, and Dominion wants all its new plants to use that fuel. But then what happens when all the other utilities get the same idea and natural gas prices go back up again?

Just gimme some truth, all I want is the truth.

Anyway, it was a day well spent.