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To: Dog Gone
Combustion turbines consume negligible water. The $14 per million Btu natural gas fuel cost at a major fuel hub can be passed on to the consumer by government edict. At 50% efficiency (pretty high) wholesale fuel cost is five cents a kilowatt hour at the generator.

Figure on fuel only cost at the wall socket from natural gas combustion turbines at eight to ten cents per kilowatt hour. Total aggregate cost per kilowatt hour is unknowable in advance but one can say that electricity will cost five to ten cents per kilowatt hour more than last summer for combustion turbine generated electricity.

Mohave has been producing cheap electricity that will now have to be replaced with marginal electricity bid up in price by those who want it the most.
39 posted on 12/30/2005 10:22:52 AM PST by Iris7 (Dare to be pigheaded! Stubborn! "Tolerance" is not a virtue!)
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To: Iris7
The $14 per million Btu natural gas fuel cost at a major fuel hub can be passed on to the consumer by government edict.

It could, but that's that's the opposite direction of where we've been moving.

40 posted on 12/30/2005 10:52:41 AM PST by Dog Gone
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To: Iris7
For decades, investor-owned utilities in the US were the envy of the world. Power companies could reliably project their future needs and build generation to meet this need when it arrived. Stockholders (for widows and orphans was how the stock was characterized) could expect steady but unflashy dividends and knowledgeable state utility commissions exercised oversight so things rarely got out of hand.
Then, in the early 1980s, utilities began to see other utility companies as the source of new growth. Utility executives voted themselves large quantities of stock, then sold out and cashed in when the company changed hands. Other utilities reinvented themselves as non-regulated holding companies with their utility interests relegated to almost sideline status. Minnesota Power sells used cars. The former Iowa Power and Light Company of Des Moines and Iowa Public Service of Sioux City are part of Warren Buffet's conglomerate. Four or five other Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa utilities are now headquartered in Madison, WI.
This is not a healthy trend.
46 posted on 12/30/2005 12:05:22 PM PST by Eric in the Ozarks
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