A coal-fired power plant in Romeoville, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Utility companies in Louisiana saddled U.S. residents and businesses with $340 million in unnecessary costs over the last three years by choosing to run three outdated, inefficient coal plants when cleaner, more affordable energy sources were available, according to a recent study an environmental group commissioned.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, a coalition of environmental lawyers, scientists, advocates and other experts, commissioned the study from Grid Strategies, a power sector consulting firm out of Washington D.C., to analyze the operating costs of power plants that supply electricity to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) market. The country’s largest regional electric grid, MISO covers most of Louisiana and spans into a large swath of the Midwest and parts of Canada.
Grid operators such as MISO handle the daily buying and selling of electricity among power generators and utility companies across the grid. MISO is designed to ensure the lowest-cost sources of electricity, such as wind and solar, are used before higher-cost resources such as coal. The power plants decide how much electricity to generate for the MISO grid in accordance with day-ahead demand forecasts.