Clean Energy Cost-Savings: A Study of Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE)

Clean Energy Cost-Savings: A Study of Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE)

Petacalco Case Study

Petacalco coal power plant operating with fuel oil

The Petacalco coal-fueled power plant has six twin units with a capacity of 350 MW each and a thermal efficiency of 35%. An additional 650-MW supercritical generator, with a 41% efficiency, went online in 2010. All the units are designed to be fueled by high-quality imported coal with a low ash and sulfur content. Although the first six units have been adapted to operate on fuel oil in an emergency, the heat recovery systems were not designed to operate long-term with high-sulfur-content fuel oil, such as that produced in Mexico. Mexico has a surplus production of domestic high-sulfur fuel oil. Because of international agreements, this surplus can no longer be exported for the production of bunker oil for maritime vessels. To provide an outlet for this fuel oil surplus, it was decided to fuel the Tula and Hermosillo power plants with fuel oil instead of natural gas and also to fuel the six subcritical units at Petacalco with fuel oil instead of coal. CFE stopped importing coal and, therefore, the 680-MW supercritical steam unit, that cannot operate with fuel oil, was left offline for lack of fuel. This recent picture shows the first six units operating full bore with fuel oil.

The consequences of this decision can be summarized as follows:

1) The cost incurred for using domestic fuel oil instead of imported coal at the first six units is US$2.8 million/day or US$800 million/year—the equivalent of investing in a modern, 1,200-MW combined cycle power plant.

6 x 350 MW x 24 h/d x 0.85 x (116.3 − 36.3) USD/MWh = 2,857,000 USD/d

2) As previously stated, the supercritical 680 MW unit cannot be fired up due to the lack of coal. The

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