> 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.
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).
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-...