Thermal Plant Data and
Assumptions
TEPPC – Data Work Group Call
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
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Overview
• Review of “Thermal Plant” Data and Assumptions
• Generator Cost Parameters
– Guidance from Intertek-APTECH
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Startup and Cycling Cost
Variable O&M
Ramping Penalty
Final assumptions for forced outage rates
• How to apply Ramp Rate Penalty in GridView?
• Better alignment with historic Operation
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Intertek-APTECH Data
• WECC – TEPPC joint with NREL hired Intertek-APTECH Engineering in
response to stakeholders concerns about the increased cycling and
ramping of thermal generation in recent studies, due to the increased
penetration of variable generation.
• The APTECH data formatted for TEPPC that impacts the dispatch decision
included:
– Hot, warm, and cold start costs
• Load follow/ramping cost impacts
• Base-load Variable Operation and Maintenance (VOM) costs
• Base Load and Cycling Costs:
• APTECH agreed for use of low-end cost data in public domain with some
exception given “typical” values for large coal plants. The reason for just
low-end data is a hedge for APTECH to protect their business.
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Definition of “Buckets”
• Costs aggregated into seven plant groups
– Small subcritical coal plants (35-300 MW)
– Large subcritical coal plants (300-900 MW)
– Large supercritical coal plants (500-1300 MW)
– Combined Cycle Units (CT, ST, HRSG)
– Simple Cycle Large Frame CT
– Simple Cycle aero-derivative CT (LM 6000)
– Gas-fired steam plants (50-700 MW)
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Better Alignment with Historic Operation
Kevin Harris
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Production Cost Model
• What is a Production Cost Model (PCM)
– It economically commit and dispatch supply to serve load of
the modeled footprint
– There are no hard constraints
– Everything is evaluated as a cost ($)
– The objective is to mimic utility or market operations
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The Rules
The rules of Production Cost Modeling
• Single owner dispatch
– Everything is evaluated as a cost ($)
– WECC is composed of 38 balance areas each optimizing their
supply to economically serve their load and contractual
obligations
• A modeler can only layer in constraints to mimic a
desired behavior
– Backcasting provides a know behavior to mimic
– What inaccuracies are you willing to accept?
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