Parched Power Plants: The Role of Markets and Technology in Power Plants’ Drought Responses

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University or the views of Utah State University. [...] The steam proceeds to turn the blades of the turbine and the rotor shaft of the generator before reentering the condenser to repeat the process all over again. [...] 3.2 Market Plants' Market-Drought Responses: Mechanisms and Intuition The own-drought effects (on heat rate and capacity factor) described in Section 3.1 likely depend on the drought condition of the market that they operate in (i.e., market-drought; the extent of drought in a market that we define as the proportion of total thermoelectric capacity that is in drought at some time period).35 Own-dr. [...] 18 month.56,57 This variable is calculated in each month as the amount of capacity in drought (calculated by summing the capacities of all plants in drought, that is, with PDSIit ≤ −1, in a given month) divided by the total capacity (calculated by summing the capacity of all plants in a given month). [...] For a plant not in drought, an increase in market-drought means that more of the market is shifted up the supply curve, which increases the probability and frequency of a plant being inframarginal/marginal and manifests as an increase in the plant’s capacity factor.