The DOE is late with its economic dispatch report. Under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, DOE had 90 days - Nov 7 - to file the report. DOE Sec Bodman gave his agency another week, which had come and gone yesterday.
This is hot stuff. Under economic dispatch, the least cost natural gas fired electric plants will be dispatched first. This often implies that old utility plants will be idled, much to the chagrin of Entergy, and Southern Corporation shareholders, and the campaign coffers of Trent Lott, Richard Shelby, Mary Landrieu, and Richard Burr. Economic dispatch figures in the cost of transmission, and around which the utilities control, and blow massive clouds of smoke. There might have been a question when NG was $5. But here at $13, there is no way that a 10,000 BTU/kWhr plant (which uses 42% more NG per unit of electricity) can compete with a modern CCGT plant, even if the CCGT plant was located in Alaska.
I think that the report will show the the evil utilities in Dixie have been raping their ratepayers for years by running old plants, and thereby keeping the cost of NG - a nationally priced commodity - much higher than it need be, not to mention the cost of local electricity. It is sure to be controversial, and something to watch. |
