Commercial status: electrical generation and nongeneration technologies

This report assesses the present status of a broad range of technologies relevant to meeting California's needs for electrical power. The technologies considered include generation and nongeneration options: generation systems are those which produce electricity, such as coal-fired power plants and solar photovoltaic systems; nongeneration technologies can either reduce the demand for electricity, such as energy conservation and solar process heat, or increase the efficiency of existing generation capacity, such as power pooling and reliability measures. The report is a revision of the draft Commercial Status Staff Report released in September 1979. Primary changes in this updated report are revised discussions for coal-derived fuel technologies, repowering, and power-plant availability improvement. Also, it reviews the status of three technologies not discussed in the draft: hot-dry-rock geothermal, solar salt-pond and thermionic conversion. Of technologies covered in these revised or new sections, only repowering of older steam boiler power plants was found to be commercially available. The report reviews the commercial availability of 47 generation and 15 nongeneration technologies. Several significant fuel processing technologies, such as methanol from coal, are included with the generation technologies. Sixteen generation technologies and 12 nongeneration technologies were found to be commercially available. For other technologies, estimates ofmore » the earliest possible date of commercial availability were made by assuming currently planned research and development is undertaken and is successful. Deployment issues associated with the various technologies are listed in a summary table.« less