***hours upon hours of startup time.***
From an absolute cold start it may take three days to come up to full load as there are several “holds” at lower loads to allow for the turbine-generators to heat up. It may take about 12 hours startup just to get to the point where you can put the lowest load on the unit.
The reason I bring this up is because if Obama gets his way, there might be some coal-fired capacity that actually does go into seasonal cold shutdown.
I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of idiots in my lifetime than this administration. Not even Jimmy Carter. Jimmy was a piece of work, don’t get me wrong, but Obama is like having Jimmy as POTUS and Jimmy’s brother, Billy, as SecTreas.
Using longitudinal tracking and existing load demand algorithms shouldn’t these utilities be able to sell a multi-tier quote system for off peak power?