The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, January 11, 1978, Image 3

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    n
Report out on energy policy
THE BATTALION Page 3
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1978
Actions proposed for electric
ilities in President Carter’s Na
nai Energy Plan (NEP) must be
efully'considered before put into
bet, a team of Texas A&M engi-
ers recommend.
The plan includes a segment on
electric utilities that contains some
good ideas, but others that fly in the
face of proven experience, they say.
Findings are in a monograph,
“Analysis of the National Energy
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Plan: The Effects on Electric
Utilities,” published in a series by
the Center for Energy and Mineral
Resources at Texas A&M.
Governor Briscoe asked the
state s major universities to analyze
the NEP as a basis for state re
sponse. Earlier Texas A&M studies
dealt with the plan’s effects on oil
and natural gas pricing, Texas ag
riculture and transportation.
Another is planned on financial as
pects.
Texas A&M engineers criticized
the NEP for failing to treat electric
utilities problems from “a coherent,
systems point of view. ”
Many of the energy proposals
would have both positive and nega
tive effects on electric utilities and
their customers,” the group report
assessed. “Only if the positive ef
fects outweigh the negative should
the proposed action be taken.
“In some cases, the effects are not
yet clearly understood and
additional study is needed. In such
cases, hasty legislative and adminis
trative requirements to implement
those proposals seem unwise,” the
report adds.
“The people who put the plan to
gether have a limited concept of the
electric utility business as a sys
tem,” Dr. Alton D. Patton, one of
the six experts on the team, said.
“They don’t appreciate the fact
that solving one problem can wor
sen another, just as pushing in on a
balloon at one point causes it to
bulge in another,” he said.
Among other actions, the NEP
called for increased power pooling
and utility interconnection, utility
rate structure reform, use of ther
mal power plants’ rejected heat for
cogeneration and heating, and de
velopment of advanced energy
sources and energy storage
technologies. Patton said that as
pects of the plan “have been per
turbed almost daily. It’s not now the
same document that we first ad
dressed.”
Pooling of power systems has
some undeniable advantages. How
ever, increases in transmission
costs, control complexity and sys
tem susceptibility to cascading fail
ures may work against more and
more interconnection of power sys
tems into pools, the 59-page report
says.
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“Incremental benefits of pooling
decrease as the pool size increases,
while disadvantages continue to in
crease,” it adds. “Thus there is an
optimum pool size, beyond which
the disadvantages outweigh the
benefits.
“Benefits of interconnection must
be evaluated in each case, and can
not be legislated,” Patton warned.
“The government plan, in effect,
says they can.”
Rate reforms to assure that utility
rates reflect costs and encourage
conservation, have some undeter
mined and undesirable effects. The
report suggests that “no class of util
ity customer should subsidize
another, but each should pay a fair
rate that reflects the total cost” of
service.
Cogeneration and district heating
from thermal plants presupposes
that rejected heat is of high quality
to be usable without further treat
ment and that a demand for the
steam exists.
“Even if demand exists, capital
expense is still there, and we must
also pay something in efficiency of
the turbine,” Patton said.
The economics of cogeneration
are more favorable today, he added.
But specific instances may not be
economically sound, if, for example,
it becomes necessary to crank down
a larger, more efficient power plant
to keep a small, fuel oil-burning
plant operating at full capacity to
maintain district heating or cogen
eration.
The report cites efforts toward
developing alternate energy sources
and reflects optimism on pos
sibilities. It points out, however,
that capital Costs problems exist also
with solar, wind and geothermal
The group producing the assess
ment also includes C.W. Brice,
A.K. Ayoub, R.D. Chenoweth, J.S.
Denison and B.D. Russell. They are
in the Electrical Engineering De
partment and Electric Power Insti
tute at Texas A&M.
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