To: TheBusDriver who wrote (15217 ) 8/1/2003 1:00:52 AM From: E. Charters Respond to The fuel cost is the major cost in a large steam power plant. With nuclear it's maintenance and capex. Coal is the cheapest power in the world, and coal is about 38 dollars a ton in quantity to buy anywhere in the world. But they have to transport it to site or to power plant. Add an average of 20 dollars per ton. A ton of coal produces 10,000 BTU's per pound or 2.93 kw-hrs. One ton of anthracite-bituminous produces 5860 KW-hrs, (divided into the cost 3800 US cents) divided by the efficiency. The most efficient steam generation in the world is about 38% overall. So it cannot cost less than 2.60 cents per kw-hr to produce, and that does not take into account line cost, capex for plant, maintenance and labour. HT lines are 1 million per mile. Cost per megawatt for a coal plant is 150K per MW. It is cheap. But they need a few MW's. Like about 200 for a simple mill. Capex will get you close to 3.2 cents and labour and maintenance will get you close to 4 cents on any planet if you build your own. At world beating prices his electricity will cost him 70 million per year for a 100,000 ton/D plant.cannot suffer brownouts. If he does, his voltage goes down, and current rises, burning out millions of dollars of electric motors. Since he must get volts, he pays extra for power. If the average retail customer paysy 6 cents let's say, in the cheapest power country in the world, an industrial user will pay maybe 8 to 12. And to top it off, they measure his motor start load at peak times with a formula. If he goes over peak load once in a month, he will pay 30% more on his bill in total that month. You don't pay less than the fuel-transport cost for power, you pay more, much more. Perhaps 3 times or 4 times more if you are an industrial customer.
