where the wind comes whistling up the...turbine blades.
Progress indeed.

I hope everyone follows suit.

A new combined-cycle gas power plant runs about $1B for 1,000MW, a new coal-fired power plant runs $4-6B per 1,500MW and a new nuclear power plant runs $13-15B per 1,600MW. The coal and nuclear plants are estimated cost to build; a SC nuclear plant was halted after estimated costs ballooned to nearly $20B. Bottom line, this project has comparable building costs to NG projects with possible cost savings over its lifetime that may make it comparable with the cheapest fossil fuel plants.

and the failure of the nuclear plant project was the buzz. Citizens will pay for this boondoggle. Will all the monies spent, they could have built a few wind and solar farms.. America at it's dumbest.

Most utilities have no competition and are regulated by utility boards. I think the utility for the SC plant is called SCANA, which is in a regulated market. There's been a big push by some utilities to have a "balanced" generation portfolio that has a mix of generation types. While this may be good as far as maintaining grid integrity should one form of energy being temporarily interrupted, it assures that more expensive generation is used instead of the most cost effective.

I have some reservations about deregulated energy markets; you can get royally screwed if you are buying electricity on the spot market and there are any price spikes (happened during the last polar vortex on the PJM grid). It's also slightly annoying choosing your electric provider. One thing deregulation has done, however, is force power companies to minimize their costs and get rid of power plants that are not cost effective. The Three Mile Island Nuclear Station is now slated for closure in 2019 since it's been operating at a loss for the better half of a decade now and the utility company can no longer pass the costs onto its consumers. The demise of coal in deregulated states like PA and OH is mainly due to cost efficiencies. This is exactly the opposite of what Trump and Republicans are telling people.

hard to imagine

I remember going to the International Petroleum Exposition in 1953 in Tulsa with my parents. Locals called it the Oil Fair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Petroleum_Exposition