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My knowledge might be old but I’ve been told one of the biggest expense for a utility are actually Peakers (more formally known as Peaking power plants). Beside
by syntaxing 3y ago
My knowledge might be old but I’ve been told one of the biggest expense for a utility are actually Peakers (more formally known as Peaking power plants). Besides the fact they’re costly to operate compared to normal power plants (about 3X of generating cost), it takes a lot to warm up these power plants at a moment notice. VPP (as shitty as the name is) would help our infrastructure a lot, and would be a net positive for society IMO.
- Scoundreller 3y ago> Besides the fact they’re costly to operate compared to normal power plants (about 3X of generating cost), it takes a lot to warm up these power plants at a moment notice. Our solution in Toronto was to just run them half of the time all the time. Haaaaaaard paywall: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/ontario-gas-plants-were-supposed-to-run-only-during-peak-periods-instead-they-re-running/article_8ba52f13-bd5a-541a-b80e-9f497ff498be.amp.html https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/ontario-gas-plants-were-...
- syntaxing 3y agoWouldn’t it be more cost effective to make a new power plant at that operating expense?
- Scoundreller 3y agoI think the warm-up cost isn’t really there when the plant is operating continuously. Oddly for a peaker plant, they built these as combined cycle, which wouldn’t make financial sense if it was to only run for short periods. A “true” peaker plant is inefficient but with lots of capacity but we basically build a “proper” power plant that has good efficiency, so it’s not too bad. But makes you wonder what went so wrong in the planning (even though the mistake turned out advantageous).