Natural Gas Likely to Become More Expensive

There seems to be an assumption that natural gas prices will remain low for the foreseeable future. However, the price of gas futures indicates otherwise. Contracts for gas delivered in 3-1/2 years from now cost about 60 percent more than currently. Source: Henry Hub Natural Gas Futures.

Added note (27 Aug. 2012): Our gas bill arrived last week with the monthly budget increased by 17% from last year.

How much wind energy does Ohio expect to have?

(Updated 09/08/12)

According to the first Quarter 2012 AWEA Report, Ohio has 112 MW of wind power, 309 MW under construction, and 3683 'in queue' (whatever that means). So we are just starting to attack our goal of 1700 MW by 2024 (see calculation below).

Our 419 MW is capable of producing only 0.7 percent of Ohio's electricity.

Calculation

Eo = Ohio's annual electricity consumption = 144*10^6 Mwh

80 % of Eo is provided by investor-owned utilities (IOU)

Legislation (127-SB221) requires about a 25 % reduction of IOU production by conservation.

Therefore the SB221 base line energy is 0.6 Eo

Furthermore only our in-state electricity-production goal in 2024 is only 1/16 of the base line.

0.8*0.75/16 = 0.0375*Eo = renewable goal.

For purposes of estimating assume only 80% of renewables will be wind. Wind goal = Ew = 0.03*Eo

Now: Ew = Pw*cf*h, where cf is the capacity factor, assumed to be 0.3 and h is the hours per year = 8760.

Putting this all together, we expect to have about 1700 MW of wind power.