Mayor moving on peaker dealThe Board of Supervisors had a little shake-up today in the middle of a conversation on the city's deal to build a new peaker power plant.
One of the biggest selling points from proponents of the $230 million natural gas fired power plant has been that it will receive the "Reliability Must Run" contract from CA-ISO, the state energy agency that dishes out those kinds of things. Right now the Mirant Potrero plant has that RMR, and city officials and activists have been trying for several years to get that plant to close down because it spews more filth into the air than a newer one would. Without an RMR, which essentially pays the power plant owner to NOT run unless needed during peak energy hours, it becomes financially dicey to keep the lights on, but Mirant has never definitively said they'd pull the plug if the city built its own power plant. Some folks, including us, have expressed concern that we could end up with two power plants.
Supervisor Tom Ammiano was intending to slap a couple of amendments onto the resolution the board heard today regarding the peaker plant, one of which would have urged the PUC to get an iron-clad guarantee from Mirant that they'd shut down. In the middle of the supes grilling the PUC on the peaker contract, Sup. Aaron Peskin interjected with the late-breaking news that Mayor Gavin Newsom was at that very moment negotiating with Mirant for a signed agreement that the plant would shutter for good if their RMR is removed.
Some of the supes seemed a little surprised by the news, if not miffed. (Gav's got a bit of a thing for trumping.) Rumors outside the chamber were that the Mayor's office has been working on this for awhile, and part of the negotiation may have to do with some city assistance with cleaning-up of the old power plant site and maybe a little fast-tracking of the permitting process for Mirant to put it to some other, more lucrative use. (Condos, anyone? Anyone around here need another $2 million condo?)
No one from the Mayor's office got up to speak about it (nor the Mayor himself, though it was his day to shine in front of the supervisors. More on that after Prop E passes.) They haven't issued a press release yet, and I swung by the press office but no one there knew anything about it. Supes Mirkarimi, Daly, and Alioto-Pier voted still voted against the resolution.
UPDATE:
Sup. Ross Mirkarimi tells us we got it wrong -- he introduced the resolution amendments, not Tom Ammiano. Sorry about that -- we missed the beginning of the hearing, and got the amendments through a fax from Ammiano's office. The hearing isn't up on SFGTV yet, so we'll take Mirkarimi's word that the amendments are part of the resolution.
They urge the SFPUC to do two things:
1. secure the closure of Mirant as a condition before operating the peakers. (Mayor's on that one.)
2. "...stipulate a controlled operating regimen that reduces the usage of the CT's as renewable in-city generation capacity comes on-line consequent to implementation of City's renewable energy plan under Community Choice Aggregation and other renewable power sources." (So, essentially, curb the peakers as we put up the solar panels.)
Also, here are some PDFs which prove the point commenter Eric Brooks makes below that the peakers will spit out about the same amount of pollution as Mirant does now:
Testimony of Bay Area Air Quality Management District's engineer Barry Young at 10/23 SFPUC hearing
Images that quantify the testimony
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Comments (2)
while none of us really know what mirant will try to do at the site of what we all hope is the soon to be former power plant, my guess is that they will try to redevelop it into light industrial/lab/office space. no one will want to buy a $1M condo next to three power plants and in the middle of a pretty intensely used industrial zone, even if the condos are right on the bay.
Posted by wideye | October 31, 2007 12:51 PM
Hi guys,
I've been following your reports on Mirant, the CTs ('Peakers'), and PG&E, and find them to be very solid.
But what they are missing is the key puzzle piece to fill in the entire picture.
That key puzzle piece is the crucial difference between the three diesel turbines at Mirant, and the big gas turbine at Mirant.
At the October 23 SFPUC regular meeting, a representative of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, at the request of Commissioner
David Hochschild, gave groundbreaking testimony which showed that the three diesel peaker turbines produce 60% of the air pollution from Mirant, while producing only 3% of Mirant's electricity. (See attached pdfs for his testimony and slides.) The 206 megawatt Mirant gas turbine on the other hand produces 97% of the electricity and only 40% of the
air pollution. The BAAQMD staffer went on to clarify that when we compare the 206 megawatt Mirant gas turbine, and the three CTs (145 megawatts) running at their maximum allowed operation (4000 hours per
year), both gas facilities will produce almost -exactly- the same amount of air pollution.
So when we peel away all of the onion layers, this issue is literally - all about, an only about, the -diesel- turbines.
Because those diesel peakers are so dirty, they are only allowed to run about 900 hours per year (hence the 3%). In replacement terms, this means that a mere 34 megawatt efficiency or renewable project would
completely replace the diesel peakers.
So, if San Francisco simply ignores the California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) and focuses only on closing down those dirty diesels, here's what will happen. First Cal ISO will not remove the Reliability Must Run status of Mirant and at least the gas turbine will continue to run. Upon December 2008, water regulations will require that Mirant
and/or Cal ISO will have to put mitigation equipment on the water cooling system on the Mirant gas turbine, thereby solving the Bay water
pollution problem. The diesel turbines will technically be allowed to run until January 2010 when very strict air quality regulations will kick in and force the shut down of those diesel turbines. Mirant and Cal
ISO will not waste funds upgrading those diesels to clean them up when they only produce 3% of Mirant's electricity output.
And the reality is, if San Francisco builds a reliable clean energy alternative to provide the 34 megawatts of capacity that would replace those diesels -before- 2010, Cal ISO is unlikely to quibble with us
about shutting them down; and in any case, even while the diesels -are- still running, it is conceivable that we could run them on biodiesel produced by the SFPUC's new waste vegetable oil recycling program.
Running those diesel turbines on waste biodiesel could vastly cut the particulate pollution they produce while we build the clean energy replacement for those turbines.
So, since the City will be required to provide at least $60 million in subsidies to the CT project, why not just take that $60 million and instead build a clean alternative to the diesels? Here's just a preliminary list of possible replacements for the diesel turbines:
1) The simple existence of Transbay Cable is an obvious justification to shut down the diesels outright. Save the $60 million, then sell the
three CT's for $45 million, and put the entire $105 million into the start-up of the Community Choice renewable energy project, which will, by 2011, bring us 360 megawatts of renewable electricity capacity,
easily enabling us to -then- close down the 206 megawatt Mirant gas plant - power plant pollution gone by 2011!
2) Ask the SFPUC to take bids on a vastly scaled down CT project that would only erect -one- of the combustion turbines. Then sell the other two turbines and gain another $30 million in revenue to spend on renewables.
3) Spend the $60 million, and the $45 million from selling the CTs, on immediately erecting 50 megawatts of solar panel projects on all City
facilities (as was originally envisioned under the $100 million solar bond project passed by voters in 2001.)
4) Spend that same cumulative $105 million dollar pot on very rapidly installing the first 34 megawatts of efficiency projects (out of the total 107 megawatts of efficiency planned) under the first three years
of the Community Choice roll-out. Possibly use the wireless metering strategy reported on in your politics blog as the foundation of that project.
So, by all means keep bashing PG&E and its nonsensical astro-turf shenanigans, but at the same time, do us the favor of bashing the CT's as well, and demand -zero- power plant pollution for San Francisco by 2011.
peace,
Eric Brooks
Our City
Posted by Eric Brooks | October 31, 2007 01:38 PM