Estimating the total cost of cycling operations at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Haynes Generating Station Unit 5

The basic premise of this paper is that utilities are underestimating the cost of cycling operation, especially with regard to the additional capital and maintenance expenditures caused by increased wear and tear on the plant. Utilities could save tens of millions of dollars per year given a proper adjustment to their avoided costs to reflect actual, or {open_quotes}total,{close_quotes} cycling costs. The R & D project described in this paper advanced the development of a method to help utilities accurately account for these overlooked cycling-related costs, The project focused on Unit 5 of the Haynes Generating Station in Long Beach, California. The additional capital and maintenance expenditures caused by increased wear and tear were calculated by two correlative methods. The {open_quotes}top-down{close_quotes} statistical regression analysis method produced estimates of $10,000 (lower-bound) to $42,000 (upper-bound) per hot start. The inclusion of replacement power costs (caused by extra EFOR costs from cycling) increased these figures to $15,000 (lower-bound) and $$70,000 (upper-bound). The {open_quotes}bottom-up{close_quotes} engineering accounting method produced an estimate of about $$42,000 per hot start. This figure compares favorably with the top-down results. Importantly, all of these cost estimates are considerably higher than the plant`s documented startup cost estimate of about $8,000 for auxiliary power, fuel, and water.