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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (129714)	12/14/2000 11:17:52 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Respond to of 1579732

I hear PG&E and Edison are nearly bankrupt. What the heck is going on out there?

To: tejek who wrote (129714)	12/14/2000 11:51:08 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1579732

Dear Ted: Simple. Not enough investment in power plants, too low a price cap on peak power, and too much dependence on hydrocarbon based fuels. The costliest generation of electric power is with open cycle gas turbines. They do have the advantages of being quick to start and are cheap for the power they produce but, the disadvantages are lower efficiencies (around 30 to 35% (1MWH equals about 34 therms at 100% eff or around 100 therms at the above efficiencies)) and high fuel costs (NG is about $3.50 a decatherm (10 therms) here). They stopped building coal fired closed cycle steam turbines (40 to 45% eff) which although expensive to build and maintain, particulate precipitators, and scrubbers are not cheap, coal is quite cheap ($20 to $30 a ton (2000 therms) or $20 to $40 a MWH). Hydro power is expensive and time consuming to build but, the fuel is mostly free but, capricious as Northern California has been in a drought for a while. The other expensive to build and maintain power plant but, the fuel is extremely cheap ($3 to $10 a MWH) is nuclear power. The real problem is the continuing pressure to not build them through over regulation and long permit application times and the continual foot dragging by the DOE to not take nuclear waste as it must have started according to law or allow spent fuel, which is still 95% good, to be reprocessed into good fuel and a little waste. It could also be used as a sink to get rid of some weapons grade plutonium (of course diluted into unusability for weapons). Reprocessing would also compact the nuclear waste to less than 1% of its original volume (what the enviromentalists do not want you to hear). A CCHTGCFBR (Closed Cycle High Temperature Gas Cooled Fast Breeder Reactor) can obtain efficiencies of 45% to 50%, very safe as shutdown occurs by merely flooding the core with water, has a fuel cost of about $1 a MWH even today, and the waste heat could heat buildings like our Menomonee Valley coal fired power plant in downtown Milwaukee (this reduces the plant cost because it serves both functions (heating at night and winter when demand is low and generating power during day and summer)). Fat chance of getting a CCHTGCFBR built. Lastly, if you create a sellers market by continually forcing utilities to get rid of the cheap power plants by refusing to reimburse them for maintenance costs because they are not "Politically Correct", utilities delay them until it has to be done. Those merchant plants whose contracts are below the amount of profit they desire, put off maintenance until absolutely necessary to get the profit required and then take the plant down for maintenance making sure it is "Done Right" (delayed until contracts are over). Now you have that sellers market. They love it! They can charge what they think they can get reimbursed for, get all that they can until, the plant is completely paid for. Now they will run it only when the profits are high and put it in mothballs or maintenance when profits are low. "Pay now or pay later but, you will pay!" What they should do is allow the utilities to build their own plants to keep the merchants honest. Allow these to be either coal fired or nuclear but, not gas turbines. This will increase rates but, you must pay the piper for bad management. Otherwise, the best short term solution is to do the rolling blackouts as it is better to plan this than letting the system just doing it on its own. Planing also can mitigate the negative effects if, it can be scheduled a few days in advance. All in all, another disaster by overly idealistic and optimistic Public Utility Commissions and Politicians. That is why Wisconsin requires that all merchant plants built in Wisconsin and Public Utilities are owned by Wisconsin Registered Corporations. And Wisconsin has made sure that enough plants are built here to provide the foreseen future requirements with a 10% and largest plant (Oak Creek Power Plant at about 2000MW) safety margin. That will assure that a sellers market will not develop, and if it did anyway, it could be stopped by state order. We are also upgrading our power grid to allow supplies to be obtained from low cost areas in future unplanned events. Its the only responsible way to do it. Pete