[syntaxing]

My knowledge might be old but I’ve been told one of the biggest expense for a utility are actually Peakers (more formally known as Peaking power plants). Besides the fact they’re costly to operate compared to normal power plants (about 3X of generating cost), it takes a lot to warm up these power plants at a moment notice. VPP (as shitty as the name is) would help our infrastructure a lot, and would be a net positive for society IMO.

[Scoundreller]

> Besides the fact they’re costly to operate compared to normal power plants (about 3X of generating cost), it takes a lot to warm up these power plants at a moment notice.

Our solution in Toronto was to just run them half of the time all the time.

Haaaaaaard paywall: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/ontario-gas-plants-were-...

[syntaxing]

Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to make a new power plant at that operating expense?

[Scoundreller]

I think the warm-up cost isn’t really there when the plant is operating continuously.

Oddly for a peaker plant, they built these as combined cycle, which wouldn’t make financial sense if it was to only run for short periods.

A “true” peaker plant is inefficient but with lots of capacity but we basically build a “proper” power plant that has good efficiency, so it’s not too bad. But makes you wonder what went so wrong in the planning (even though the mistake turned out advantageous).