Electricity is something we take for granted. You flip the switch and the lights come on. But that is not the case at Grand Gulf now and that suggests trouble and higher electricity bills for Entergy customers across Mississippi. Entergy Mississippi customers are paying for power neither received nor even generated.
For the past thirty-five years, the Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant in Port Gibson has been the cornerstone of Entergy Mississippi’s electricity production. But those days are evidently gone.
Through mid-December, Grand Gulf has failed to produce electricity for 141 days during 2020 and only partial power for another 118 days. This means the plant has run at capacity only 26% of the time in 2020.
This dismal performance has caught the attention of the Nuclear Energy Institute, which provides data that ranks Grand Gulf as the worst performing nuclear plant in the U.S. from 2017-2019 for its 68.8% capacity factor over those three years. That is an F- grade when compared to the U.S. nuclear plant fleet average of 92% over the past five years.
And there are others warning about the costs and reliability of Grand Gulf.
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In December 2019, The Liberty Consulting Group presented to the Mississippi Public Service Commission (PSC) a fuel audit and management review of Entergy Mississippi for 2018-2019. This audit report was requested by the MPSC and it included numerous economic and operational aspects of Grand Gulf.
The audit states “When production at Grand Gulf is curtailed for any reason, the costs continue and the energy must be replaced by other sources, exacerbating the above-market costs of Grand Gulf. This is due to the fact that most nuclear operation and maintenance expenses are fixed, not variable.” The audit further states “Grand Gulf is an economic burden to Entergy Mississippi when running at high capacity factor and is even worse when production drops.”
Entergy Mississippi’s customers are paying for replacement energy from other sources in addition to paying for Grand Gulf’s costs, even when the plant is un-operational.
Grand Gulf’s most recent significant operational issues apparently began in September 2016 due to alleged personnel errors made by Entergy.
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report for that event states “The root causes were the inconsistent reinforcement of nuclear professional behaviors … and insufficient detail in operating procedures associated with the operation of [a key safety] system.”
In an October 27, 2017 Special Inspection Report, the NRC said “Grand Gulf plant management notified the NRC of their intent to delay startup of the plant, following the forced outage, to implement corrective actions to assess and resolve the plant’s operational performance concern … in the areas of operator fundamentals, conservative decision-making, procedure quality, and the material condition of plant equipment.” This is concerning and also pretty scary.
If mistakes by Entergy personnel caused Grand Gulf to shut down, those costs for any repairs and the excess costs for replacement electricity should be paid for by Entergy and not its customers. Operation and maintenance costs since 2016 exceed $2 billion, plus repair and upgrade costs of over $0.7 billion. Power delivered by Grand Gulf for 2016 through 2019 was nearly half of the expected or normal power for such a plant. Twice the costs at half the results.
Astonishingly, there has been no PSC investigation of prudency in Mississippi of the Grand Gulf issues that would determine who should be responsible for any increased costs.
In 2017, the Mississippi Public Utilities Staff (which is separate from the Public Service Commission) purportedly engaged a consultant to review the 2016 Grand Gulf outage. But also dismaying — there has never been a publicly-released report of those findings.
The bottom line for Grand Gulf and Entergy — What does it plan to do with a very expensive power plant that isn’t carrying its weight or fixed costs in producing reliable and reasonably-priced electricity for its customers?
The bottom line for the Mississippi Public Service Commission — What do you plan to do for Entergy’s customers?
Bigger Pie Forum authored and sponsored this post.
15 comments:
We need to retire old nuclear power plants and build newer designs such as breeder reactors and sodium graphite. Nuclear is absolutely necessary because solar is a dead end. We have reached peak solar efficiency and it isn’t even 40% on a clear sunny day. Building new Nuclear Plants power does require significant lead time. Solar is not viable and never will be. It is nothing more than a federally subsidized pipe dream.
WOW. Forget Entergy's inefficient power production (or the lack thereof). It sounds like the PSC has some 'splainin to do!
In the end, no one will get reimbursed, and talk of this issue will go away.....and Entergy will continue to do what it does. That's just the way things work.
Don't forget that "C o o p e r a t i v e Energy is like an 18% owner of Grand Gulf.....What the hell are the monopolistic socialist rube coops going to do for their customers? oh excuse me "M E M B E R - O W N E R S"....
Where's (Hanoi) Jane Fonda when you need her?
City of Pearl experiencing it's own Jackson water meter fiasco. New digital meters from Entergy were installed then bills increased from $80 to $400.
Entergy will reinstall old meter for $100 then charge you and extra $30/mo to come read the old meter - which is still cheaper than the $400 - $600 power bills.
I have no clue about what this board about anymore. Kingfish why don't you just call this" whatever the hell I wanna talk about"
I have no clue about what this board about anymore. Kingfish why don't you just call this" whatever the hell I wanna talk about"
Do you EVER stop complaining?
But...but...Haley Fisarckely, in his best childish monotone voice has promised us for years that we're getting a bargain and Entergy (with emphasis on the T) has improved our lives and will do so for years. If we can't trust these rate-payer funded commercials, who the hell can we trust?
Before the takeover, MP&L was an honest, trustworthy and service oriented company. None of those guys are around today.
1:55...Any chance you could just wander around in the back yard and pick up last year's pecans and maybe pour out the accumulated water in your buckets?
1:55 PM
What do you think a blog is?
"The bottom line for the Mississippi Public Service Commission — What do you plan to do for Entergy’s customers?"
I'll tell you what they did for me when Entergy swapped out my old meter for a new smart meter on the side of my Brandon home, and very obviously misread the old meter by 1,000 kwh....something that Entergy by numerous phone calls would not resolve.....one call that's all and the PSC lit a nuclear fire under their butts and it was resolved. Someone "in the know" of the industry clued me in that Entergy stores the old meters just in case of such a discrepancy. It was all a matter of getting them to find my old meter to check their error and resolve the issue by adjusting my bill.
MP&L was pissed knowing that Mississippi Power got away with their clean call scam. So they felt compelled to do this to make the rest of Mississippi feel the pain. Meanwhile, TVA is still laughing.
OK, another good effort by the Bigger Pie folks. More stuff:
"Before the takeover, MP&L was an honest, trustworthy and service oriented company."
There was no takeover, just a name change. One day, New Orleans based Middle South Utilities ran MP&L, LP&L, AP&L and NOPSI. The next day, New Orleans based Entergy ran Entergy Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and New Orleans. The same employees that worked at MP&L the day before worked at Entergy Mississippi the next day. There was a corporate philosophy shift, but that's another subject.
I did not realize Grand Gulf was having problems. That is serious. That plant generates around 1400 megawatts of electricity for MS, LA and AR, which is a lot to replace if it is not available. At one time it generated about 1/3 of the electricity Entergy needed for its part of the entire state of MS. It is also an interesting idea that ratepayers should not have to pay for electricity Entergy brings in to replace non-working Grand Gulf. That makes sense, given the enormous presence (and expense) of Grand Gulf.
Nuclear plants are expensive to operate because you have to have built in backup systems for everything and a large security presence. That means people. Grand Gulf probably has close to 1,000 employees and generates 1,400 megawatts of electricity (I think). You could build 3, 500 megawatt natural gas plans and employ about 50 people at each of them - and you don't need security guards with machine guns.
In the end, Grand Gulf is falling victim to the same thing that felled Kemper - advancement in fracking technology which has natural gas prices at the lowest levels they have ever been. Giant, expensive electricity generating facilities are just not as needed as they once were. Add in advances in energy efficiency and we are stretching electrons even farther. The future is smaller, more efficient generating stations. At least, until someone figures out how to store electricity - that's the next revolution!
8:16 - Nothing in your post contradicts this restated reality:
"Before the takeover, MP&L was an honest, trustworthy and service oriented company."
Nobody in New Orleans had a damned thing to do with MP&L before the company and area served by it were sucked into the megalopoly.
Does Bigger Pie have a solution recommendation?
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