Coal Plants Restarted After Power Prices Surge

Asia is using more coal than ever and now the UK is restarting coal power plants after a surge in prices. Is this good news for Wyoming?

Britain has fired up two coal units at one of its power plants to help keep up with energy supply demands. The price of wind and solar, plus natural gas, has surged. That makes the price of coal look even better just when winter is around the corner.

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And it's not just the UK.  Électricité de France will be turning on a coal plant as well.

The British government wanted to phase out coal-generated power by 2024. But the alternative energy the country uses is either providing insufficient, too expensive, and unreliable according to Daily Telegraph.

Wind power is not providing anywhere near what was promised. A recent power report showed wind power produced 474 megawatts when 14,286 megawatts were promised.

Natural gas prices have jumped, making coal attractive again. The price for gas has now jumped to £219.46 ($303) per megawatt-hour on Monday morning, according to Bloomberg. So to keep up with energy demands in the UK and in France for this winter, they will need something more reliable and affordable. That means coal.

Even California is finding that a 100% turnover to wind and solar is not possible. Recently California began bringing natural gas power plants back online due to blackouts and brownouts caused by unreliable wind and solar farms.

According to the Wyoming Mining Association, California still relies on a lot of coal to keep its grid running.

The state of North Dakota recently purchased a coal power plant to keep it from closing down. ND along with a Canadian province and a few surrounding states wanted "reliable energy," and they were finding wind and solar were just not cutting it.

Wyoming coal is not the king it once was. But it is far from dead as it proves to be cheap, and most of all, reliable.