spirilis
Minister of Fire
Is there really that huge a discrepancy between the power generation of PJM vs NE and NY? PJM's nuclear could carry either one of those alone by that graph...
New Englands back on burning Oil for power
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spirilis
Minister of Fire
ISO New England has a cool article on the cold snap in December. The below statistic is staggering.
A cold snap that began December 26 pushed up demand for both natural gas and electricity, raising prices and resulting in a total energy market value of $856 million for the month. The bulk of that energy market value came in the last week of the month, during the cold snap, when the energy market value was $395.6 million for just one week.
http://isonewswire.com/updates/2018...ectricity-prices-and-demand-in-new-engla.html
A cold snap that began December 26 pushed up demand for both natural gas and electricity, raising prices and resulting in a total energy market value of $856 million for the month. The bulk of that energy market value came in the last week of the month, during the cold snap, when the energy market value was $395.6 million for just one week.
http://isonewswire.com/updates/2018...ectricity-prices-and-demand-in-new-engla.html
Two recent articles which seem relevant to this discussion. I realize these come from rt. wing organizations, so if someone wishes to post the lefts side feel free. Anyone living to the Northeast knows how the weather was real tough back in Jan. to my way of thinking, the move and rush to close coal and oil plants was not a well thought out plan. Guess it comes down to the fact that," I'd rather be lucky than good any day" https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03...-have-blacked-out-during-recent-bomb-cyclone/
this one ties in ?? The Russian tie in seems timely!
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...Bj9UP6wW-sH47y4wCGzWimXk3vKGcnsqa3d8cmGcgI4dA
this one ties in ?? The Russian tie in seems timely!
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...Bj9UP6wW-sH47y4wCGzWimXk3vKGcnsqa3d8cmGcgI4dA
Looks like the NE could be in bigger trouble than they realize. Exelon announced the closure of Mystic Generating station today.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...ration-Files-Retire-Mystic-Generating-Station
EVERETT, Ma.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Exelon Generation today announced it has filed with the ISO New England Inc. (ISO-NE) to retire Mystic Generating Station’s Units 7, 8, 9, and the Jet unit on June 1, 2022. Absent any regulatory reforms to properly value reliability and regional fuel security, these units will not participate in the Forward Capacity Auction scheduled for February 2019.
Mystic Generating Station is a 2,000-megawatt natural gas- and oil-fueled power plant. Mystic Units 7, 8 and 9 are the operating units at the plant; Units 1-6 are decommissioned. Mystic employs 110 full-time workers, more than 200 local union craftsmen for seasonal readiness outages, and pays $15 million per year in local taxes that support municipal government, schools, libraries, parks and other services. Exelon is committed to holding informational meetings with employees over the next several months to ensure transparency throughout the process.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...ration-Files-Retire-Mystic-Generating-Station
EVERETT, Ma.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Exelon Generation today announced it has filed with the ISO New England Inc. (ISO-NE) to retire Mystic Generating Station’s Units 7, 8, 9, and the Jet unit on June 1, 2022. Absent any regulatory reforms to properly value reliability and regional fuel security, these units will not participate in the Forward Capacity Auction scheduled for February 2019.
Mystic Generating Station is a 2,000-megawatt natural gas- and oil-fueled power plant. Mystic Units 7, 8 and 9 are the operating units at the plant; Units 1-6 are decommissioned. Mystic employs 110 full-time workers, more than 200 local union craftsmen for seasonal readiness outages, and pays $15 million per year in local taxes that support municipal government, schools, libraries, parks and other services. Exelon is committed to holding informational meetings with employees over the next several months to ensure transparency throughout the process.
In the good old days, utilities were monopolies and were paid a guaranteed rate of return to generate power no matter what the costs. The result was high power costs as the incentive was to drive the capital, maintenance and operating costs as high as they could as they were getting a guaranteed return. Consumers and more importantly consumers complained about high costs so the power generation side was deregulated. The introduction of wind and solar which is effectively legislated as must buy, means that the market demand for power swings heavily and on occasion the power prices flip negative when demand is low and solar and PV are cranking. This really nails the old legacy power plants designed for baseload as nukes typically are run flat out 24/7 and conventional boiler based plants take close to day to ramp up production. The faster they ramp up and down the more maintenance costs they incur. Unfortunately power demand varies over the course of day with the only big demands 5 days a week ramping up from the AM to the PM and then dropping rapidly overnight. This doesn't match well with these old baseload plants.
The solution is natural gas fired combined cycle plants, they can go from dead flat to producing 2/3rd of their power in less than an hour with the final 1/3 output in 8 hours. The plants are modular so they can switch the internal configuration to match the expected daily demand curve and do it with air emissions far less than a coal plant or even a boiler based natural gas unit (due to higher overall efficiency). Combined cycle plants can also be oil fired but New England's strict air emission limits (partially so strict as upwind plants in the Midwest contribute a high ambient emissions load to the region to begin with) means nuke or natural gas plants are the only way to go. Nuke plants cant ramp so they end up selling power at a loss or even having to pay to get rid of it for many hours a week. The only way they stay running is with subsidies and the plant owners have figured that with tight power generation market that they can blackmail the regional grids into giving them subsides like New York has done with a couple of nukes. They do it under the guise as they are zero carbon emitting sources. Legacy coal plants on the other hand are not clean out the stack or near the plant, low efficiency and big CO2 emitter's. The same blackmail is being attempted. With respect to the articles in the prior post anytime I see Murray Energy quoted I consider the article not worth wasting my time.
The lack of natural gas pipelines into New England has some smoke and mirrors covering the real issues. The main reasons why pipelines are not getting built is that no buyer wants to buy so called "firm gas" which is the bread and butter of the pipeline business. Kinder Morgan is such a great investment as they effectively end up being a guaranteed high rate of return investment as they only build the pipelines with fixed firm contracted buyers that pay a monthly fee for the privilege of being able to rent a portion of the pipeline, if the buyer doesn't need the gas they still pay for the portion. The problem is natural gas is not easy to store unless there are underground geological structures well suited for storage and unfortunately New England is mostly rock. ISO New England has been screaming that there is peak gas shortage coming and this past winter was an example. They have some self interest in this as they have been pushing to be allowed to get involved with the natural gas market in the region and regulate it like the power market. Merchant gas generators were built and permitted quickly and assumed someone else would make sure they have gas. They could have been built for oil backup but that requires a lot more upfront cost. They are not going to buy firm gas unless subsidized.
So there is big pot of cheap natural gas sitting in PA and not enough pipelines to service peak demand in New England. Pipeline companies will gladly build pipelines if someone is willing to guarantee a profit. The states can legislate around local NIMBYism. The New England states were considering doing this, they would commit to firm supply contracts and if the demand wasn't there they would somehow dump it back on the consumer either through taxes or fees and that's what drove a couple of big pipeline proposals but they individual states started dropping their commitments figuring "someone else will" shoulder the burden. That's the real reason the big pipeline proposals got dropped. Meanwhile the PNGTS pipeline from Quebec to Portland Maine reportedly has 30% more capacity if they install booster stations as when it was built the developers wanted it in quick and avoid air permitting so they boost it at the border and then live with the friction loss all the way to Portland. PNGTS has offered to install booster stations as long as someone else is interested in paying for it via firm gas contracts.
The net result are there are many parties who will gladly make a buck if some entity guarantees them a profit. The question is do you subsidize old dirty relatively inefficient base load plants not well suited to match the regional power demands directly or do you indirectly subsidize new combined cycle gas plants indirectly by having the states buy firm gas capacity?. Further confusing the issue is Hydro Quebec has stated that if the demand is there they can supply as much power as New England needs, if they need more capacity they already have future sites picked out. They also have the ability to build out the sites they have already developed. HQ is a state entity and really don't need to deal with Nimbyism as the majority of the land is Crown land. They will gladly supply New England 3000 MW and since they use ponded storage and don't worry about environmental consequences they can just drain the ponds quicker to meet peak demand. Figuring out what is best requires long term political thinking and unfortunately the current political system deals with the short term and big players spread the bucks around to make sure they get the long term profits. On the other hand let New England have a few big brown out events and blackout or two and then something may get done.
The solution is natural gas fired combined cycle plants, they can go from dead flat to producing 2/3rd of their power in less than an hour with the final 1/3 output in 8 hours. The plants are modular so they can switch the internal configuration to match the expected daily demand curve and do it with air emissions far less than a coal plant or even a boiler based natural gas unit (due to higher overall efficiency). Combined cycle plants can also be oil fired but New England's strict air emission limits (partially so strict as upwind plants in the Midwest contribute a high ambient emissions load to the region to begin with) means nuke or natural gas plants are the only way to go. Nuke plants cant ramp so they end up selling power at a loss or even having to pay to get rid of it for many hours a week. The only way they stay running is with subsidies and the plant owners have figured that with tight power generation market that they can blackmail the regional grids into giving them subsides like New York has done with a couple of nukes. They do it under the guise as they are zero carbon emitting sources. Legacy coal plants on the other hand are not clean out the stack or near the plant, low efficiency and big CO2 emitter's. The same blackmail is being attempted. With respect to the articles in the prior post anytime I see Murray Energy quoted I consider the article not worth wasting my time.
The lack of natural gas pipelines into New England has some smoke and mirrors covering the real issues. The main reasons why pipelines are not getting built is that no buyer wants to buy so called "firm gas" which is the bread and butter of the pipeline business. Kinder Morgan is such a great investment as they effectively end up being a guaranteed high rate of return investment as they only build the pipelines with fixed firm contracted buyers that pay a monthly fee for the privilege of being able to rent a portion of the pipeline, if the buyer doesn't need the gas they still pay for the portion. The problem is natural gas is not easy to store unless there are underground geological structures well suited for storage and unfortunately New England is mostly rock. ISO New England has been screaming that there is peak gas shortage coming and this past winter was an example. They have some self interest in this as they have been pushing to be allowed to get involved with the natural gas market in the region and regulate it like the power market. Merchant gas generators were built and permitted quickly and assumed someone else would make sure they have gas. They could have been built for oil backup but that requires a lot more upfront cost. They are not going to buy firm gas unless subsidized.
So there is big pot of cheap natural gas sitting in PA and not enough pipelines to service peak demand in New England. Pipeline companies will gladly build pipelines if someone is willing to guarantee a profit. The states can legislate around local NIMBYism. The New England states were considering doing this, they would commit to firm supply contracts and if the demand wasn't there they would somehow dump it back on the consumer either through taxes or fees and that's what drove a couple of big pipeline proposals but they individual states started dropping their commitments figuring "someone else will" shoulder the burden. That's the real reason the big pipeline proposals got dropped. Meanwhile the PNGTS pipeline from Quebec to Portland Maine reportedly has 30% more capacity if they install booster stations as when it was built the developers wanted it in quick and avoid air permitting so they boost it at the border and then live with the friction loss all the way to Portland. PNGTS has offered to install booster stations as long as someone else is interested in paying for it via firm gas contracts.
The net result are there are many parties who will gladly make a buck if some entity guarantees them a profit. The question is do you subsidize old dirty relatively inefficient base load plants not well suited to match the regional power demands directly or do you indirectly subsidize new combined cycle gas plants indirectly by having the states buy firm gas capacity?. Further confusing the issue is Hydro Quebec has stated that if the demand is there they can supply as much power as New England needs, if they need more capacity they already have future sites picked out. They also have the ability to build out the sites they have already developed. HQ is a state entity and really don't need to deal with Nimbyism as the majority of the land is Crown land. They will gladly supply New England 3000 MW and since they use ponded storage and don't worry about environmental consequences they can just drain the ponds quicker to meet peak demand. Figuring out what is best requires long term political thinking and unfortunately the current political system deals with the short term and big players spread the bucks around to make sure they get the long term profits. On the other hand let New England have a few big brown out events and blackout or two and then something may get done.
peak finished with,"Figuring out what is best requires long term political thinking and unfortunately the current political system deals with the short term and big players spread the bucks around to make sure they get the long term profits. On the other hand let New England have a few big brown out events and blackout or two and then something may get done."
no brown outs yet, so we will have to stick with luck and continue to pay through our nose. just another non competitive deal for New Eng. consumers and businesses.
no brown outs yet, so we will have to stick with luck and continue to pay through our nose. just another non competitive deal for New Eng. consumers and businesses.
while not a major pipeline needed, this has become more and more common .
Judicial activism, forget the law or what judges should be doing?
Judicial activism, forget the law or what judges should be doing?
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