Geothermal Plant Capacity Factors

The capacity factors recently provided by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) indicated this plant performance metric had declined for geothermal power plants since 2008. Though capacity factor is a term commonly used by geothermal stakeholders to express the ability of a plant to produce power, it is a term frequently misunderstood and in some instances incorrectly used. In this paper we discuss how this capacity factor is defined and utilized by the EIA, including discussion on the information that the EIA requests from operations in their 923 and 860 forms that are submitted both monthly and annually by geothermal operators. A discussion is also provided regarding the entities utilizing the information in the EIA reports, and how those entities can misinterpret the data being supplied by the operators. The intent of the paper is to inform the facility operators as the importance of the accuracy of the data that they provide, and the implications of not providing the correct information.