Add "What Just Happened To My Electric Bill" blog post

[bspatafora]

Description

Add blog post explaining why Chicagoans' electric bills are increasing and what we can do about it.

Testing Instructions

N/A

Checklist:

• My code follows the style guidelines of this project
• I have performed a self-review of my own code
• I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas
• I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works
• New and existing unit tests pass locally with my changes
• If I added a large new feature, I added it to the release notes (ReleaseNotes.vue)

Data Update (if applicable):

• I have followed the Data Update Checklist for updating to new year's data

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[bspatafora]

Here is a list of the charts needed for the post. Each corresponds to a draft chart in the PDF of a previous draft of the post, attached here.

1. Electricity generation by source over time

   • Draft chart: pie charts on page 1 (note: these use data for IL, ~1990–2020; based on data from the Illinois Power Agency)
   • Open question: Should the final chart be US or IL? Likely US, given that other charts will be for the US as a whole, but on the other hand IL is perhaps more relevant given the website, and the data tell a clearer story (given that there are fewer sources to represent)

2. Electricity consumption over time

   • Draft chart: "US electricity consumption index" on page 2 (from Utility Dive)
   • Should probably include different forecasts for coming years, similar to the draft chart
   • May want to highlight the recent period of flat load growth that we're emerging from (~2010–2020)

3. Price of electricity generation by source over time

   • Draft chart: "How did the price of electricity..." chart on page 3 (from Our World in Data)
   • Think this should use LCOE and include, for renewables, solar, wind, and perhaps battery storage

4. PJM interconnection queue by source over time

   • Draft chart: "PJM cumulative capacity in queue" on page 3 (unsure where I got this one)

What Just Happened To My Electric Bill draft.pdf

[bspatafora]

@vkoves @hunter-yeago Here's the draft PR of the "electric bill price spikes" blog post.

I've included a comment with the list of charts I think are most appropriate to the information in the post, as well as where I found the draft versions of the charts/additional thoughts.

@madeofcroatia It had sounded like you might be interested in helping out with the data visualization side of this—pinging you in case you still are!

Would be very grateful for help moving this post closer to publish!

Quick note: There are still changes to be made to the body of the post (e.g., actually making the pull-out box make sense and, in particular, updating the post to reflect the fact that CRGA has passed!)

[vkoves]

For #3, this source of LCOE breakdowns may help, where we can download the data to manipulate at ourselves: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy?overlay=download-data

[vkoves]

@bspatafora - I've got a start on some of the graphs! Some data notes:

1. LCOE - I was able to find raw data for the LCOE of renewables, but I think adding a comparison point of natural gas and coal is helpful
2. Electricity Consumption - I was able to find a data source for consumption historically, but not the forecasts in that image. If you could find those, I could work on integrating them!

I haven't added graphs for energy sources by time, but it shouldn't be too bad to do that if you get me the raw data you want.

LCOE	Electricity Consumption

[vkoves]

Also I think the PJM capacity queue data may come from this report: https://emp.lbl.gov/queues

I'm having hard time finding the raw data - it's totally okay I think if some of the graphs we just cite as is!