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Title: Estimating the flexibility of utility resource plans: An application to natural gas cofiring for SO[sub 2] control

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States)
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/59.317612· OSTI ID:7039125
 [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Case Western Reserve Univ., Cleveland, OH (United States)
  2. Analytic Sciences Corp., Dayton, OH (United States)
  3. Energy and Environmental Analysis, Inc., Arlington, VA (United States)

Utility planners must cope with large uncertainties concerning fuel prices, environmental laws, power demands, and the cost and availability of new resources. In this situation, flexibility is valuable. A flexible plan is one that enables the utility to quickly and inexpensively change the system's configuration or operation in response to varying market and regulatory conditions. The authors present a decision tree-based method for quantifying the economic value of flexibility. The method is then used to compare the relative flexibility of natural gas cofiring with other strategies to comply with the acid rain control requirements of the 1990 US Clean Air Act Amendments. The authors also compare the measure of flexibility with one based on the standard deviation of present worth. The latter perversely finds the least flexible technology (scrubbing) to be the most flexible''.

OSTI ID:
7039125
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States), Vol. 9:1; ISSN 0885-8950
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English