Selling cold air DSM incentives lead to combustion turbine inlet air cooling opportunities for ESCOs

Conference · Sat Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:86002

Sullivan, J; Ebeling, J A ^[1]

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1. Burns and McDonnell Engineering Co., Kansas City, MO (United States)

Declining capacity margins and increasing competition among many electric utilities are putting new pressures on utility demand-side management (DSM) planners and the demand-side resource plans they develop. Most of this pressure has resulted from utilities` experiences with DSM programs that have not produced the impacts initially anticipated. Therefore, when responding to solicitations for demand-side resources, energy service companies (ESCOs) and other DSM contractors have been forced to focus increasingly on the measurability and reliability of the DSM packages they offer utilities. This paper proposes that combustion turbine (CT) inlet air cooling could be packaged as a demand-side resource to help utilities and ESCOs avoid the measurability and reliability problems of some other types of DSM programs. With CT inlet air cooling, in which ice is produced off-peak and stored for increasing CT capacity during summer peak periods by cooling the inlet air temperature, two utilities have obtained a reliable 67 MW (combined) resource for a total cost of about $15.4 million, or $230 per kW. Because this technology`s ability to meet peak demands is the result of predictable physical properties, the certainty of the impact of CT inlet air cooling is an attractive feature to electric utilities that are facing new competitive pressures to scrutinize the economics of all their DSM programs. This paper shows that minor modifications to existing DSM incentive mechanisms, such as PSE and G`s Standard Offer, could provide the necessary financing framework to lead to a boom in the CT inlet air cooling DSM market for ESCOs and other DSM contractors.

• OSTI ID: 86002
• Report Number(s): CONF-941024--; ISBN 0-7918-1213-8
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

25 ENERGY STORAGE
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
AUGMENTATION
CAPACITY
COLD STORAGE
ELECTRIC UTILITIES
GAS TURBINE POWER PLANTS
GAS TURBINES
LOAD MANAGEMENT
OFF-PEAK ENERGY STORAGE