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Comment by nthompson | Hacker News Reader

The Idaho legislature is totally dominated by farmers (I mean this literally: The Idaho congressmen are primarily farmers.). These farmers are allowed way better deals on hooking up solar and providing it to the grid than city consumers. In addition, a large number of farmers already have solar panels since grid hookups are very expensive.

The "California arbitrage" has been very profitable for Idaho for many years: This involves selling California renewable hydro, for which they pay a premium, and buying coal from Utah to replace it. (Ever driven north of SLC to Idaho on I-15? Those high voltage transmission lines are there for a reason.)

If I had to bet, I would suspect the lines from the Nevada coal plant also supply California, and Idaho Power will sell the solar production there.

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Can you use Utah coal energy to pump water back into reservoir for clean hydro plants?

Sure, but now you’re just powered by coal with a massive inefficiency in the middle.

He's making a joke that the arbitrage could generate infinite amounts of money by generating clean power with coal power.

haha they ought to try that.

"energy laundering"

Even if nobody does the pumped hydro scam, green energy is often sold twice: once locally, where people know the energy they use comes from clean sources, and once somewhere else where customers pay a premium for a certificate stating that the energy they use was pretend-swapped with a place where the local supply is clean.

Nobody in Norway will ever consider their Tesla coal powered because someone in Germany had their utility buy the hydro bragging rights off the Norwegian utility, but the German driver will happily believe the illusion that someone in Norway is responsible for the coal use, thanks to a tiny premium he paid on his energy bill. And it's not even quite as bad as it sounds, because that tiny premium does indeed influence the market dynamic in favor of green energy, it's just not quite as clean as the on-paper-swap would make it seem. That Norwegian who benefits from his utility selling off green bragging rights will never be tempted to outbid the German for that certificate, because the facts of energy provenance are on his side no matter what.

It's true that there aren't really such things as "green electrons" in a vastly interconnected grid. And it's true that my "60% Green" plan often gets to that 60% with REC's purchased from a renewable plant half a continent away that any reasonable analysis would tell you the raw "electrons" or "energy" doesn't really reach me.

But you make it sound like there's some double-spend accounting going on. I thought that RECs had to be tied to the output... if Norway sells some hydro RECs to Germany, the electrons may not technically reach the German driver (it doesn't quite work like that), but they did have to at least leave Norway in a way that the Norwegians can't count them in their own consumption.

I know energy markets are the most complicated beasts out there, but can you explain how this sold-twice accounting works in more detail?

I think you misunderstood (or I misformulated): I'm not accusing Norway of selling more certificates than they should, I'm saying that the buyers of the actual "green electrons" won't feel the tiniest bit dirtier from the certificates having been sold. The "double spend" would be virtually clean (from a certificate) plus actually clean (but with the certificate sold).

It boils down to the question wether this is true or not:

> but they did have to at least leave Norway in a way that the Norwegians can't count them in their own consumption

This reads as if Norway could only sell certificates for surplus energy they exported (sans certificate), but I think they can sell certificates for as much green energy as they produce, virtually downgrading their own consumption to coal/gas/whatever energy source is greenified with the certificates. Of course it would hurt their on-paper emissions, but who would honestly care about those when you know that in reality you are clean?

I'd certainly love to be proven wrong on this!

Ah, lemme see if I get this now. So the REC certifies 1MWh of clean energy was produced. It doesn't matter where it was consumed (that's kinda a nonsensical question anyways), but only the holder of the REC can count it.

You're saying the Germans feel good (and paid a premium) for the Norwegian RECs certifying a few MWh's of clean energy were produced somewhere... the Norwegians can't count the RECs in their accounting (so they're "dirty" in official stats), but they don't care because although you can't point to individual green electrons, they know their grid is green whether the accounting says it or not.

So the "double-spend" is the Germans get the official credits because they paid for them, but the Norwegians don't care about the accounting and self-count themselves as green.

Idaho's license plates literally have the phrase "FAMOUS POTATOES".

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