I’d suggest you provided part of your answer:
“we have made our wind investments”
I’m not sure what “low” nat gas prices is, either. If NG is going up, then so is electricity. The last administration fought tooth-and-nail to prevent NG capacity to increase.
Also, building growth is an issue. All being equal, if demand goes up 11%, so does the price.
They’re developing all around me - farm land being turned into houses and I expect that the power companies do nothing to expand capacity and just raise the prices.
As I see it, most folks with electric power usually got it from a power plant in the vicity. Then along came this solar & windpower. Well, somebody has to recoup the expense of building these thing & I suspect they are especially expensive to build, particularly the wind generators. Of course the solar units must be converted to AC. Extra lines are put in to hook up to these part-time poer units. So now you are paying for one or two Part-time power producing units. Sometimes the STANDARD power plants must be cut back so you don’t have an over-abundance of electruicity. I think this also has it’s own cost in efficiency. So when you add up all the extra power-producing units, there is naturally a higher cost. I think it’s better just going with full-timp power from a standard power plant, be it gas turbine, hydro-electric, or what ever else exists. “Green energy” is not full-time energy.