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Originally Posted by Jim Bullis
I think these are separate decisions. If the rest of us get to allocate the power you produce during the day, we will use it to cut out natural gas use in peaking plants that handle the hot afternoon load peaks, when the sun is hot. Then the night time loads will be filled by cranking up the coal plants, which are in general the cheapest way to meet the load.
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I see no problem with that... peaker plants have terribly low efficiency - it's too expensive to build a plant that gets high efficiency with a relatively low up time ratio. Besides, night time base loads are generally turning off the peakers, and turning down the base load plants
It'd be better to take the rebate - use the power when you need it, sell back whatever you don't use to benefit all... For me, that's a no brainier
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Maybe this is why the utilities sometimes offer night time charging rate discounts, which they can afford to do if the power comes from coal. Otherwise, they have to get their money back using government rules that all them to charge the rest of us extra.
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I see it the other way around... The night time rate is the base rate, the day time rate is more of a premium penalty due to high demand (necessitating less efficient power generation)...
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Someone mentioned energy consumed in refining... Here's that data
U.S. Fuel Consumed at Refineries