Study of Benefits of Improved Powerplant Reliability and Productivity. Phase 2 Report. Analysis of Two Utility Systems and Regions

摘要

The potential benefits of improved nuclear and coal power-plant productivity, based upon an analysis of two utility systems that have wide differences in generation fuel mix are studied. The simulated benefits are quantified using models of each of the utility systems, as well as models for two larger multi-state regions within which the utility systems operate. Participants in this second phase of the study are the Detroit Edison Company, the New England Power Pool, and the Northeast Utilities Company which is a member of the New England Power Pool. This phase of the study evaluates the potential benefits of improving and the forced and planned outage rate of base-load coal and nuclear-generating units. The forced and planned outage rates were each postulated as being improved uniformly over an eight-year period, 1978 to 1985, by a total of 5 percentage points. Although the feasibility of these improvements and the costs necessary to achieve them were not part of the scope of the study, the financial simulation did treat cost in terms of assumed benefit/cost ratios of 4 to 1 and 2 to 1. This was necessary in the financial analysis to ascertain how these costs would impact on the division of savings between the utility stockholders and the consumers. These assumed benefit/cost ratios have no analytic basis and it is possible that the ratios for improvements in some plants could even be unfavorable, resulting in increased costs to be divided between the utility stockholders and customers if the improvements were actually implemented. (ERA citation 03:048174)