Palo Verde 1, 2 and 3: Why All The Shutdowns And Reduced Power Levels?

Ok, so when did this begin. This is a attack on the stock price of APS... Better yet, he is smart. He is attacking the financing of the single ideology with the utility sector. Then we have backlash from the Trump era.

Can anyone see the implications if he wins...

Billionaire Energy Speculator Tom Steyer Bankrolls Arizona Initiative That Would Close America’s Single Largest Source Of Clean Energy – OpEd

April 11, 2018 Michael Shellenberger* 0 Comments

By Michael Shellenberger*

Tom Steyer, a billionaire energy speculator, is bank-rolling an Arizona ballot initiative that would prematurely close the state’s sole nuclear plant — which is also America’s largest single source of clean energy — and replace it with fossil fuels.

If Steyer’s ballot initiative succeeds, Palo Verde will close in 2024 instead of in 2044, according to its operator, Arizona Public Service (APS).

Steyer’s ballot proposal, which will be voted on this November, would require 50 percent of Arizona’s electricity to come from renewable sources like solar and wind — an increase from 13 percent today (over half of which is from hydro-electric dams).

The initiative excludes nuclear from the clean energy mandate even though the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds nuclear produces one-quarter of the emissions of solar.

If it passes, the initiative would only increase the share of the state’s electricity from clean energy sources by four percent. In 2017, Arizona generated 46 percent of its electricity from clean energy source — 79 percent of which came from Palo Verde.

In order to accommodate such a large increase in intermittent energy from solar and wind, APS would need to close Palo Verde and replace it with natural gas, APS says.

If Palo Verde is replaced entirely by natural gas, carbon emissions in Arizona would increase by the equivalent of adding 2.8 million cars to the road.

Steyer’s wealth derives heavily from his investments in fossil fuels and renewables. A colleague of Steyer’s told The New York Times in 2014 that Steyer’s firm was “like an anchor in the Indonesian coal industry… By drawing money to an overlooked sector, they helped expand the coal industry there.”

Hmm, energy mandates becoming popular and recent big decline in their stock price. Is Arizona going blue...

***Are there financial pressures affecting this gigantic nuclear plant? These guys capacity factor have been  jumping around a lot. I remember back in the early 2000s when management was stricken with a severe self inflected mental illness. Basically they believed in one of these fly by night management books...they slashed management and instituted massive budget cuts. The employees were totally disillusioned. This is the first recorded decline of a nuclear facility caused by a errant ideology.  After much delay, the NRC finally kicked some ass and brought the facility back under adult control.

Basically, faster, cheaper better...slash the so called useless levels of management to the bone...

Then the diesel generator issues today and back in the 2000s. In this facility, the DGs seemed to be the weak link with broad-based resource problems.

 Wiki:

Safety concerns

In an Arizona Republic article dated February 22, 2007, it was announced that the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) had decided to place Palo Verde into Category 4, making it one of the most closely monitored nuclear power plants in the United States. The decision was made after the INPO discovered that electrical relays in a diesel generator did not function during tests in July and September 2006.

The finding came as the "final straw" for INPO, after Palo Verde had several citations over safety concerns and violations over the preceding years, starting with the finding of a 'dry pipe' in the plant's emergency core-cooling system in 2004.[14]

During a March 24, 2009, public meeting, the NRC announced that it cleared the Confirmatory Action Letter (CAL) and has returned Palo Verde to Column 1 on the NRC Action Matrix. The commission's letter stated that "The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined that the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station has made sufficient performance improvement that it can reduce its level of inspection oversight." "Performance at Palo Verde has improved substantially and we are adjusting our oversight accordingly. 

These gigantic facilities decline unseen by outsiders until component degradations and poor judgement begin to be seen by outsiders. So then the NRC and management gets their panties in a bunch... It maybe take mouths or even years before they get the facility under control. Even as the facility is flooded  with new resources, equipment problems and judgment show a terrible decline.