Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> writes:
Why is 2 to 3 times more capacity offline this year compared with previous years? I don't know. It appears the "supply" shortage is not due to increased demand, or even the lack of new power plant capacity; but due to the shutdown of existing capacity by generation companies at a higher rate than normal.
My understanding is that there is a seasonal "online / maint" cycle for the generation plants, and that many of them were not taken offline for normal PM several months ago because of energy usage _then_... my unsubstantiated guess would be that just like letting your car go 30,000 miles between a pair of oil changes, procrastination of the maint cycle eventually comes home to roost and that's what we're seeing now. ---Rob