Tag Archives: FPL

NextEra’s Robo Is Wrong About Offshore Wind

“Terrible energy policy.” That was James Robo’s dismissive comment regarding offshore wind development in NextEra Energy’s first quarter earning’s call last week. His comment was preceded by a recollection that he, and the company, had “worked very hard at offshore wind 15 years ago…on a project off of Long Island.” Ultimately, however, the company didn’t get the project—talk about holding a grudge. More to the point, is Robo really relying on a 15-year-old experience to drive corporate policy? It would be an understatement to say that much has changed in the energy business, particularly concerning renewables, during this period. To see just how much has changed, let’s narrow the scope to the last four years. And to make it particularly relevant, let’s look at the changes at NextEra subsidiary Florida Power & Light, one of the nation’s largest utilities.

In its 2014 Ten-Year Site Plan (which can be found here), FPL told Florida regulators that it had two operating solar photovoltaic facilities, totaling just 35 MW. It also said that it was in the process of “identifying other potential sites in the state for potential central station PV facilities.” But later, in its forecast of future generation, it projected that in 2023, the final year of the forecast, the utility would produce 67 gigawatt-hours of electricity from PV sources—one GWh less than the 2013 total. In other words, FPL had absolutely no intention of pursuing PV generation.

Continue reading NextEra’s Robo Is Wrong About Offshore Wind

Energy Secretary Perry
 Badly Misses Mark
 In Grid Study Memo

Energy Secretary Rick Perry clearly has bought into the fact-challenged approach to governing perfected by President Trump and now practiced almost daily by White House spokesman Sean Spicer: In a speech last week to the National Coal Council, Perry told the group that one of key problems from the Obama administration’s energy policies is “that we’re seeing this decreased diversity in our nation’s electric generation mix.”

Unfortunately for Perry, the fact is that the nation’s electric generation mix actually is much more diverse today than it was eight years ago. According to data from EIA, the independent statistics arm of his new agency (the same one, of course, that he forgot he wanted to eliminate back in the 2012 presidential campaign), the U.S. grid is demonstrably, provably and irrefutably more diverse now, as the chart below demonstrates.

Coal’s share of the market, as everyone knows, has fallen, dropping from roughly 50 percent of the total in 2008 to just under a third today. In its place, the amount of gas generation has shot up, and now accounts for about a third of the nation’s generation total as well. The rest of coal’s lost market share has been gobbled up by the wind and solar industries, with nuclear largely unchanged. Objectively, a system where two sources account for roughly 33 percent of the total, a third 20 percent and a fourth 15 percent is significantly more diverse than one with a single resource accounting for almost 50 percent of the total, and the next two at roughly 20 percent each.

Secretary Perry may not like the changes, but to say that something is not what it is, indeed, to say that it is the opposite of what it is, borders on the irresponsible. Worse, the secretary is using this and a number of other questionable assumptions as the basis for a department study looking into issues surrounding the “long-term reliability of the electric grid.”

Continue reading Energy Secretary Perry
 Badly Misses Mark
 In Grid Study Memo

Vanishing Demand,
 Not Trump Coal Crusade
 Is Real Issue For Utilities

It’s planning time in the electric utility industry, and a raft of new reports make two points abundantly clear:

  • Efforts to “save” the coal industry are bound to founder since utilities, as a group coal’s largest customer by far, have moved on and are planning a cleaner future in which the black rock’s current share of the electricity market, in the low 30 percent range, is as high as it’s ever going to get.
  • Vanishingly small increases in demand (and the occasional outlook for declines) will be a major issue for the industry in the next 10 years.

In its latest 10-year power plant siting plan, for example, Florida Power & Light pointed out that it was continuing its efforts “to move away from coal-fired generation.” In total, the utility said it planned to take 1,216 MW of coal-fired generation off its system by the first quarter of 2019. (FPL’s site plan can be found here.)

Similarly, in its recently filed 2017 integrated resource plan (IRP), PacifiCorp, the sprawling utility holding company that serves 1.8 million customers in six western states, said its preferred generation portfolio going forward “reflects a cost-conscious transition to a cleaner energy future.” Through 2028, PacifiCorp said it would be able to meet its system-wide power needs through demand side management (DSM), new renewable (primarily wind) generation and short-term purchases on the wholesale market. Looking longer-term, the company said it planned to shutter 3,650 MW of coal-fired capacity by 2036. (PacfiCorp’s IRP and other backup information can be found here.)

Continue reading Vanishing Demand,
 Not Trump Coal Crusade
 Is Real Issue For Utilities

Looking At The Brackets:
 New Nuclear Plants
 Are Odds-On Favorite
 To Lose In First Round

I just finished filling out my March Madness brackets (for recreational purposes only, I assure you), so I think we also should start a pool on when the next utility will ask its state regulators for permission to build a new, large-scale nuclear power plant? If we did, should ‘never’ be one of the options?

Anyone willing to put their money on Georgia Power? The company actually had gotten state approval to do some preliminary work at a possible site for two new reactors In Stewart County on the border with Alabama. But earlier this month the utility told regulators it was suspending work on the expansion plans at least until its 2019 integrated resource plan is filed.

How about Florida Power & Light? The company’s planned two-unit expansion at Turkey Point has been on the books since 2008, when FPL was optimistically forecasting the new reactors would be up and running by 2018 and 2020, before subsequently pushing the start-up back first to 2022 and 2023 and now to 2027 and 2028. But last year the company told Florida regulators that while it still intended to secure its NRC license for the facility (which is expected sometime this year), it didn’t intend to do anything else until 2020.

Finally, how about Dominion Resources, which has been pushing for years to add a third unit to its North Anna site in Louisa County, Va. The proposed reactor, a 1,470 MW design developed by GE and Hitachi known as the ESBWR (Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor), is a first-of-its-kind unit with an estimated capital cost of almost $15 billion and an all-in cost of about $20 billion. Despite its enthusiasm for the project, even Dominion acknowledged in its 2016 IRP that the reactor was only economic in one scenario—full implementation of the former Obama administration’s soon-to-be defunct Clean Power Plan.

The problems for these companies, and any others considering such a step, go well beyond the well-documented, and still far-from-over cost overruns and delays that have plagued the four new reactors currently under construction in Georgia and South Carolina. The real issue is that the technology—one with high capital costs requiring a long time of steady state operation to get into the black—doesn’t mesh with the nation’s rapidly evolving electric power system. Committing to a nuclear plant constrains you for at least 40 years, and perhaps for as long as 80 years; and while you are still committed, everything else is changing.

Continue reading Looking At The Brackets:
 New Nuclear Plants
 Are Odds-On Favorite
 To Lose In First Round

Nuclear Power Economics
 Requires Believing
 In `Impossible Things’

It is increasingly clear that the economics of nuclear power don’t add up. Just in the past two and a half years, for example, seven plants at six sites have been shut down due to uneconomic performance or massive equipment repair costs—and other plants are on the chopping block. Similarly, the two ballyhooed active construction projects, in Georgia and South Carolina, are seriously behind schedule and way over budget. Nonetheless, utility executives and regulators in a number of states still have not gotten the message, notably in Florida and Virginia where executives at Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light and Richmond-based Dominion soldier on, pushing new reactor proposals whose economics, simply put, just don’t add up and could leave ratepayers holding the bag for billions of dollars in nuclear construction costs.

The charade is particularly obvious in Florida, where FPL, a unit of NextEra Energy, annually goes through a process with state regulators to show the feasibility of a proposed two-unit, 2,200 megawatt addition to its existing facility at Turkey Point south of Miami. The yearly dance was completed last month with regulators signing off on FPL’s feasibility analysis as “reasonable” and approving the utility’s ability to recover from ratepayers the roughly $25 million it will spend this year on the reactor proposal.

A closer look at FPL’s analysis, however, shows that, at best, it stretches the boundaries of what can be considered reasonable. In particular, there is the little matter of whether the plant will be built and operated for 40 years, or 60.

Continue reading Nuclear Power Economics
 Requires Believing
 In `Impossible Things’