Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Hawaii has a 100% RPS by 2040. They are making a lot of progress towards that and will become a great case study not only for other islands and isolated locales (eg. rural Alaska), but distributed generation will gradually overtake utility-scale plants, thus reducing the importance of the transmission infrastructure.

Coal has no future and will continue to decline. Plants are closing due to economics, alone, which is why there are no new coal plants in most parts of the country. Gas will definitely continue to overtake it in the short-term, but eventually their growth will stagnate while wind and solar continue to grow. How soon this happens will largely depend on the volatility and overall direction of gas prices.... This legal case by Sunniva and Solarworld to impose tariffs on solar panels, could definitely be an issue, but only a short term one.

As for overall energy usage, electrification (as well as automation) of transportation and other sectors will result in the gradual decline of oil, as well. There's been too much production for awhile, which is what's causing the low prices and high inventories. That's not a viable long-term solution.

I'm not against that.  I like the concept that France uses, numerous smaller nuclear plants, instead of massive one.

I think we need a mix of power sources, including some nuclear. But, nuclear power has become uneconomic, and unless there are advances in that area I don't see it expanding as a percentage of our power supply.

I am not an engineer. The Mississippi River dams do not generate hydroelectric. Articles I read say it would be inefficient. But can you explain why it would not be worthwhile to generate power from a dam? These dams in some instance are about a mile wide, and so quite a few turbines could turn.

As I noted, four on the Ohio do generate power.  The amount of power obviously depends on the flow, which is substantial, and the "drop", which is not with dams made for navigation as their primary purpose.  You want a tall dam, like Hoover/Boulder or other dams out west for the "drop".  At some point, the cost of installing the turbines is not economical.
I don't think the Mississippi has many dams south of Minneapolis, but I have not checked.  The Ohio has them because the river can almost dry up in summer making navigation difficult or impossible.  The dams in the Appalachians (TVA) originally were designed for flood control as well as electrification.  Some were built WAY back by Alcoa in Maryville, TN to provide power for aluminum smelting.  Most of those have been acquired by the TVA in later years.  You can see some of them off US 129 (Tail of the Dragon) at times.  They are impressive in a way considering they were built by a company in ca. 1917.  Fontana Dam is the largest, tallest dam east of the Rockies, and was built in part to provide power to the Oakridge Manhattan bomb project.
It's over 400 feet high on a decent sized river and generates a good bit of power.  But adding more hydro these days by building more dams is not a likely option.  Folks do look at updating turbines and installing them on a few dams, but that's about it for hydro in the US.  The dams on the Ohio River are more in the 40-70 foot high range, equipped with locks for the barge traffic.

It's hella cold here in Chicago

- that is all ... carry on

Uh, yeah. This f'ing sucks ass.

I will still take 4 seasons over "death heat summers" down south.

15 here in balmy Tulsa, OK.

Supposed to get down to 4 tonight, I think.