Spreading Value: How Environmental Policy Changes the Calculation

摘要

The spark spread can be expressed in dollars per megawatt hour and is the theoretical difference between the price at which electricity from a natural gas power plant can be sold less the cost of the fuel required to produce that energy. It is theoretical because the general practice of defining the spark spread standardizes the efficiency of the plant to be 55 percent and excludes operations and maintenance and other variable costs associated with a specific plant.