You may have heard that the EPA is planning to shut down roughly 20% of coal generated electrical capacity by 2015.
Francois Broquin, a co-author of reports on coal by Bernstein Research, said the combined rules could push as much as 20 percent of U.S. coal-fired electric generation capacity to retire by 2015. “Obviously that will have an impact,” he said.
What kind of impact? Let us get technical (not too) and see.
Electrical power grids must be able to supply the power demanded or else they will not supply any power at all. But. You know in the real world the SCHTF. Things like electrical storms and high winds can break power lines. A bad bearing can trip a generator off line. A tsunami can flood a plant. S*** Happens. So you have reserve margin. Generators either in hot idle or cold idle that can be brought on line for peak demand or to make up for failures in part of the system. So how much margin is enough? Around 10% is sorta adequate and 20% is too much (it costs money to carry the idle equipment on the books).
We are running at the low end of that range and possibly below. But for this case knowing roughly is good enough. Let me add another roughly: coal supplies 40% of the electrical power in America. It may be more. Never mind. So what is 40% of 20%? (coal generation times % shut down) . That would be about 8% of grid capacity. Or almost all of the margin that makes the electrical supply reliable.
Nationwide blackouts and certainly local black outs are in our future if this is not stopped or scaled way back.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
8 responses to “Reserve Margin”
The EPA regulates CO2, dust from farmers fields and power plant emissions, all without regard to consequences. Before 2015, we need to shut down the EPA or at least seriously emasculate it. Why do government regulatory agencies all eventually come to resemble metastasizing cancers?
The plan is to reduce this country to third world status by convincing people they’re saving the planet. (And of course, grabbing hitherto unimagined new powers….)
40% of 20% is 8%, which on our current margins does suffice to make electrical power an iffy thing in this country. Would there be reactions? Better believe it. Especially where power is vital to industry, medicine, or communication.
Now consider the pollution associated with gasoline powered personal generator.
[…] Hat-Tip to CV for making Klein lokk doubly dumb. Eco World Content From Across The Internet. Featured on EcoPressed Fossil Fuels: Will North America be the new Middle East? Like this:LikeBe the first to like this post. […]
Simon,
Where did you get the figures on reserve margins from? I’m curious, because the information I found suggests that current reserve margins for electrical generation are well above 10% for all the US electrical generation regions.
I’m trying to find the actual data, and there’s so much “he said” out there it’s bloody near impossible to figure out the likely impact.
For what it’s worth, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s 2010 report (available here) has all the US and Canada electric generation districts well above their 15% reserve capacity margin, and only Texas likely to drop below that margin in the next 10 years.
I haven’t got a clue how accurate the data is, but since it’s the only hard data I’ve managed to track down so far, I figured it was worth pointing out.
If you’ve got a better source, I’d like to check it out.
Kate,
Cutting the margins in half is not a good idea.
I admit my data re:margins is old. But all that is not critical for purposes of this discussion.
Here is an e-mail I sent some one (IP in case you are interested): What neither you nor Ezra seem to get is the concept of Reserve Margin. Of course the reserve is underutilized. It is supposed to be. And of course there is excess capacity. There is supposed to be. And of course the reserve constitutes the oldest plants. It is the most economical way to operate. The plants (as far as capital expenditures are concerned) are paid for. They only need to generate enough electricity to cover operating expenses plus a profit. So what do we get out of turning on these dirty plants as needed? Grid reliability.
The “Greens” want to get rid of these plants faster without a government edict? Think of ways to remove government impediments from gas drilling and production. High reliability low cost supplies of gas. Speed up permitting of new plants. etc.
=====
You do get the concept of Reserve. What you are missing is the concept of Cost.
Simon,
Thanks for the info. I agree that halving margins is a bad idea. What I’m trying to find is an accurate estimate of costs and how much reserve capacity is likely to get taken out, and how much new capacity is expected to come online over the same time period.
It’s not the concept of Reserve, or of Cost that’s at issue. It’s the difficulty of getting accurate bloody data about any of it.
Definitions are difficult. Is the reserve computed against peak? Estimated (future) peak? Average?
What is the margin at 3 AM? At 3 PM?
That is why I qualified my numbers as “rough”.