Is Exelon Terrorizing their Nuclear Employees over Threatening Plant Shutdowns this Christmas?

About Six percent of the fleet is severely threatened. If you owned these plants, would you be throwing money into these plants for maintenance.

The only way I would approve any more subsidies would be if they they replaced these plants with new and larger units.

What would happen if one of these plants had a large and embarrassing accident?
Quad Cities (2) 

Byron(2)

Clinton (1)

Davis Besse (1) 

Emagine the poor employees being terrorized with losing their jobs come next outage just around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Exelon has been yapping about doing this for a few years, you got to know the smart employees don't want to continuously put up with the media show and political shutdown. You know they are bailing out of the plant.

Byron is a two plant facility. It is rather new in coming on line in 1985.

Clinton is a single unit and it came on in 1987.

Quad Cities is another two plant facility and it is an old dog who can't see and hear anymore.

SO we are talking about five plants. 

The tactic of the utilities up here in New England is to remove generation solely to boost the price of electricity. This creates real time insecurity on the grid that tends to boost the grid prices. These guys can make a lot more money yanking capacity off the grid instead of creating grid reliability. The real gold mine will be in coming years as other capacity becomes obsolete and with any economic growth...this artificially creases capacity shortage. Then it will be many year and much dragging of feet of excessive prices before new capacity gets added to the grid.You get it,the size of Exelon allows them to get away with what the smaller and more localized utilities can't get away with.  

Then if the mega utility is a poor economic and public service model...everyone else then pays for its dysfunction.

***Is the forward market (Seeking Alpha) a good indicator of the future price of electricity or is the grid speculators distorting the future markets. 

Monday, December 1, 2014

Ohio's Electricity Providers Seeking State 'Bailout'

Debate Comes Against Backdrop of Frozen Energy Standards in Ohio

Posted By Eric Sandy on Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 11:59 AM

The three largest electricity providers in Ohio — FirstEnergy (the Northeast Ohio-based company we'll focus on here), AEP, and Duke — are hoping the state will approve individual plans to keep their older power plants operating. The proposals — "bailouts," essentially, as critics put it — would lock in fixed-rate contracts for customers, regardless of fluctuating market price.

For FirstEnergy in particular, the proposal would simply guarantee/force a market for energy produced at plants owned by its deregulated subsidiary, FirstEnergy Solutions — the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Toledo and the coal-fired W.H. Sammis power plant (see photo) on the Ohio River. The proposal covers 15 years.

You can almost count on the many tens of millions of dollars of poor quality maintenance jacking up the cost fleet wide leading to threat of a shutdown. Where is the rainy day fund during the nuclear plant golden years, when the nuclear fleet was making money hands over fist compared to everyone else? Why didn't they plow money into the nukes back then to make these plant more efficient and less costly.

This is the grandpa of all blackmails. You can see it coming for a million miles. The will declare the shutdown of the dog plants Quad Cities next June…then they will continue the blackmail on Clinton and Byron. Has the size and breath of Exelon’s influence created this new opportunity. How does this blackmail game going to play out outside the nuclear fleet. How will Exelon creatively destroy grid capacity for an ends. How will utilities throughout the nation play the Exelon’s game of creative destruction of capacity. Is Exelon saying you destroy coal capacity we will destroy our nuclear capacity.

I mean, aren't they in the process of destroying as lot of coal grid capacity in the future because of the CO2 initiatives... threatening capacity and future price spikes and insufficient grid capacity. 

These plants are on the outskirts of Chicago area…bet you these guys are critical when grid is testing it limits. So in a arctic vortex or in the sweltering summers not having these guys available…the grid will be tons more sensitive with price spikes. These guys can make way more money creating long term grid instability and shortages than doing their societal duty of serving the vital needs public needs. This strategy’s aims is jacking up the price of electricity. Bottom line, this indicates Exelon is focused on jacking up grid price and their dismal stock price on the backs of the consumers. They are not about being a low cost producer.

These poor employees, think about how they feel this Christmas season with exelon terrorizing their employees with shutdowns. This is probably terrorizing the whole fleet...  

Exelon weighs closing 3 power plants

PreviousNext

Small Newspaper Group | John GreenwoodExelon weighs closing 3 power plants

As Exelon Corp. considers shutting down three of its nuclear facilities in Illinois, it's asking lawmakers and the public to recognize the multifaceted value of the energy it produces.

The three stations at risk for closing are Quad Cities Generating Station in Cordova, Byron Generating Station in Ogle County, and Clinton Power Station in DeWitt County.

Operations in La Salle County, Morris and Braidwood are not at risk.

During a Monday editorial board meeting with the Dispatch/Rock Island Argus — a sister paper to The Times — Richard Myers, senior vice president of policy development at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said nuclear facilities are facing several economic challenges, including little to no growth in energy demand since 2008, historically low natural gas prices, a congested power grid and energy policies that benefit renewable wind energy.

Congested grid is basically a way to created an artificial shortage of electricity. Having a dysfunctional grid confers an advantage over one from another. How does Exelon benefit from a congested grid? Powerful forces many times sabotage fixing grid congestion. And our terrible political dysfunction makes all this possible.     

At times, the Quad-Cities station is operating at negative pricing, said William Stoermer, senior communications manager for the Quad Cities station. He said the company won't make a final decision on closings until after next June, giving state lawmakers time to study the market and find solutions.

He said they want lawmakers to create a model to regulate a fair and equitable marketplace, identify what needs to be done to improve the grid and recognize nuclear power is a carbon-free source of energy.

"We are not looking for a bailout," Stoermer said.

Exelon Corp. owns and operates 11 reactors at six nuclear energy facilities in Illinois, which provide 48 percent of Illinois' electricity and about 90 percent of the state's carbon-free electricity. The facilities in Illinois spark $8.9 billion in direct and secondary output, officials said.

The station in Cordova has an economic impact of $1.4 billion in total output, employs roughly 900 people and paid $7.4 million in property taxes this year -- more than half of which went to the Erie School District.

Myers said people tend to take the economic impact of nuclear facilities for granted.

"When they do go away, if they go away, the impact is pretty large," Stoermer said. "These facilities are real economic engines for the community and counties in which they operate."

The three plants under review provide electricity to about three million homes. Myers said if they were shut down, the energy needed for those homes would come from somewhere, but likely would cost more and be generated from a source producing more carbon emissions.

Stoermer said they are asking legislators, grid operators and residents to recognize the economic impact. "We want to be the provider of electricity in Illinois long-term," he said.

The Cordova facility is licensed to operate through 2032.