The impact of corporate decisions on energy reliability

Xcel learned the hard lesson that if you feed the crocodiles, do not be surprised when they bite you. Alex Epstein was not exaggerating when he wrote recently that we are all indebted to the politicians who have cut solar and wind subsidies and saved our grid by incentivizing reliable generation, which was having its operating revenue looted by subsidized, unreliable solar and wind. Of course, more work to preserve reliable generation is required at the state level, but at least sanity has returned to federal energy policy. However, the political sphere is only one arena in which the struggle...