Risk Analysis - An Economic Comparison of Oil and Coal Power Plants

Author

Mohammad M. Iranmanesh, University of Central Florida

Keywords

Coal economics, Power plants, Cost of operation

Abstract

The demand for electric energy increases every year. However, due to recent changes in the U.S. energy supplies, a growing gas shortage forced suppliers to curtail deliveries of natural gas for power generation. Many utilities anticipating supply problems switched to burning more costly light distillate oil. Unfortunately the Arab boycott of 1973 and the following price increases for oil forced again utilities to seek a cheaper source of fuel, namely coal, as a substitute for oil. Even though the U.S. has abundant supply in coal, the use of coal in power generation was limited in the past because of a higher capital cost associated with installing air pollution control devices. Therefore, current utilities primary concerns are "does the lower fuel price of the coal power plant really outweigh its disadvantage of higher construction costs as compared to the oil-burning power plant?". Thus, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the economic preference of the coal burning power plant compared to the oil-burning power plant in suppling base load power. An extensive analytical model accounting for the effects of escalating fuel prices was examined and a computer simulation model was developed to handle risk associated with various input parameters using the SLAM as a simulation language.

Notes

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Graduation Date

Summer 1980

Advisor

Park, Chan S.

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Engineering

Degree Program

Engineering

Format

PDF

Pages

85 p.

Language

English

Rights

Public Domain

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Identifier

DP0013417

Subjects

Coal -- Economic aspects, Power plants -- Cost of operation

STARS Citation

Iranmanesh, Mohammad M., "Risk Analysis - An Economic Comparison of Oil and Coal Power Plants" (1980). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 493.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/rtd/493

Contributor (Linked data)

Park, Chan S. [VIAF]

Park, Chan S. [LC]

University of Central Florida. College of Engineering [VIAF]

University of Central Florida. College of Engineering [LC]

Collection (Linked data)

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

Accessibility Status

Searchable text