{"id":2683,"date":"2020-01-22T09:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xenetwork.org\/ets\/?post_type=xen_episodes&#038;p=2683"},"modified":"2020-09-07T14:10:05","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T21:10:05","slug":"episode-113-coal-plant-self-scheduling","status":"publish","type":"xen_episodes","link":"https:\/\/xenetwork.org\/ets\/episodes\/episode-113-coal-plant-self-scheduling\/","title":{"rendered":"[Episode #113] \u2013 Coal Plant Self-Scheduling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Owners of uneconomic coal plants in the US have tried many ways to keep operating, even when it is not profitable to do so, such as out-of-market subsidies and re-regulation (as we discussed in <a href=\"https:\/\/xenetwork.org\/ets\/episodes\/episode-41-generator-survival-strategies\/\">Episode #41<\/a>), bailouts and wholesale market controls (as we discussed in <a href=\"https:\/\/xenetwork.org\/ets\/episodes\/episode-70-who-should-control-wholesale-markets\/\">Episode #70<\/a>), and seeking capacity payments or other novel payments for alleged reliability (as we discussed in our trilogy of shows on decarbonizing power markets, <a href=\"https:\/\/xenetwork.org\/ets\/episodes\/episode-90-how-will-decarbonized-power-markets-work\/\">Episodes #90<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/xenetwork.org\/ets\/episodes\/episode-97-state-policies-drive-decarbonization\/\">#97<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/xenetwork.org\/ets\/episodes\/episode-105-can-competition-decarbonize-electricity\/\">#105<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s another tactic, variously known as \u201cself-committing\u201d or \u201cself-scheduling,\u201d and it happens when a utility that owns a coal-fired power plant elects to operate the plant no matter what the going rate for power is, even if that price is below its operating costs. Fully regulated utilities oftentimes can pass the costs of operation onto their customers even when they\u2019re electing to run at a loss, without having to go to the trouble of asking for additional cost recovery from a regulator, or getting a legislator or wholesale market operator to give them a handout in one form or another. And it all happens more or less invisibly to customers and regulators. Only a researcher with a sharp eye and expert knowledge of what to look for would even detect these uneconomic operations, such as our guest in this episode.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fully-regulated utilities can choose to operate their plants at a loss when regulators give them a way to pass those losses onto their customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[848,872,21,647,142,254,877,397,126,873,875,128,80,846,690,874,255,182,680,845,844,262,876,878,847],"class_list":["post-2683","xen_episodes","type-xen_episodes","status-publish","hentry","category-energy-transition-show-podcasts","tag-bailouts","tag-blue-lake-rancheria","tag-coal","tag-colorado","tag-decarbonization","tag-deregulation","tag-dominion-energy","tag-grid-balancing","tag-grid-power","tag-humboldt","tag-hurricane-maria","tag-mark-jacobson","tag-microgrids","tag-out-of-market-payments","tag-pge","tag-puerto-rico","tag-re-regulation","tag-regulation","tag-securitization","tag-self-committing","tag-self-scheduling","tag-subsidies","tag-tri-state","tag-virginia","tag-zecs","xen_guests-joe-daniel"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO 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