Intermittent electrical dispatch penalties for air quality improvement

Miscellaneous · Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1993

OSTI ID:7038622

Marhnay, C

Like most large U.S. urban areas, the photochemical smog problem of the San Francisco Bay Area occurs as intermittent episodes. Current electric utility emissions regulations rely on mandated stack clean-up equipment which performs poorly on intermittent problems because emissions reductions are not concentrated during episodes. Electric utilities have some flexibility in the boilers they commit and dispatch during episodes, so a policy to encourage use of cleaner boilers could result in reduced emissions of the smog precursor gas NO[sub x]. Such a policy deviates from the tradition of utility minimum cost operations, resulting in higher fuel costs. In this study, the dispatch of more polluting thermal generation within confines of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) is penalized by the imposition of a variable NO[sub x] tax. The effect is explored through a Lagrangian relaxation unit commitment and dispatch simulation of an historic episode in September 1989, using a Monte Carlo sampling of outage states. Imposition of the tax results in modest NO[sub x] reductions, achieved for a small increase in fuel bill. The cost per avoided ton of NO[sub x] emitted during the episode is low compared to the costs of Selective Catalytic Reduction of NO[sub x]. The taxed dispatch tends to use more units but at lower power. Additionally, the variance of expected emissions across the outage states of the system is reduced, reflecting the fact that the dispatch optimization takes full account of the tax. Since during any one future episode the system state is random, the lower variance implies that the existence of the tax lowers the risk that NO[sub x] emissions will deviate from their expected value. Two power sector NO[sub x] emissions patterns, with and without the tax, were fed into BAAQMD's version of the Urban Airshed Model, but the change in emissions resulted in an immeasurably small effect on peak ozone estimates for the September 1989 episode.

• Research Organization: California Univ., Berkeley, CA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 7038622
• Resource Relation: Other Information: Thesis (Ph.D.)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
AIR POLLUTION CONTROL
OPTIMIZATION
ELECTRIC UTILITIES
POLLUTION REGULATIONS
COMPLIANCE
TAXES
EVALUATION
AIR QUALITY
SELECTIVE CATALYTIC REDUCTION
URBAN AREAS
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
CONTROL
DENITRIFICATION
ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
POLLUTION CONTROL
PUBLIC UTILITIES
REDUCTION
REGULATIONS
296000* - Energy Planning & Policy- Electric Power
293000 - Energy Planning & Policy- Policy
Legislation
& Regulation
290300 - Energy Planning & Policy- Environment
Health
& Safety