Methodology for Assessing Alternative Water-Acquisition-and-Use Strategies for Energy Facilities in the American West

摘要

A method for assessing alternative strategies for acquiring and using water at western energy plants was developed. The method was tested in a case study of cooling-water use for a hypothetical steam-electric power plant on the Crazy Woman Creek, an unregulated stream in Wyoming. The results from the case study suggest a careful analysis of reservoir design and water-right purchase strategies can reduce the cost of acquiring and using water at an energy facility. The method uses simulation models to assess the capital and operating costs and expected monthly water-consumption rates for different cooling-system designs. The method also uses reservoir operating algorithms to select, for a fixed cooling-system design, the optimal tradeoff between building a make-up water reservoir and purchasing water rights. These tradeoffs can be used to derive the firm's true demand curve for different sources of water. The analysis also reveals the implicit cost of selecting strategies that minimize conflicts with other water users. Results indicate that: (1) cooling ponds are as good as or preferred to wet towers because their costs already include provisions for storing water for use during the normally dry summer months and during occasional drought years; (2) the energy firm's demand for overall water consumption in the cooling system was found to be inversely proportional to both the cost of installing make-up water reservoirs, and the size of the energy facility; and (3) the firm's willingness to pay for existing rights is proportional to both the cost of installing reservoirs, and the size of the energy facility. (ERA citation 07:043817)