Blog: Redondo Power Plant Low 2012 Run Rate Shows It's Not Needed

The CEC just released the 2012 run rates for power plants across the state.  One would expect that AES Redondo would have been running full blast to make up for the San Onofre Nuclear Power Generating Station (SONGS) being offline all year... especially since during this same time we experienced some of the biggest heatwaves in years.

But you would be wrong. Despite the SONGS outage and the heatwaves, AES Redondo ran at a paltry 4.82 percent of its capacity. That's right—I said 4.82 percent. 

To add insult to injury, this number is grossly inflated by AES Redondo's antedeluvian technology. It takes AES Redondo over 24 hours to ramp up and down. So it must be brought online earlier than needed. Then rather than shutdown overnight when power demand drops, they must keep it online for the next day. So this 2012 run time does not accurately reflect the need. New plants come online in minutes. 

When you combine this extremely low run rate with the fact that three brand new power plants are coming online this year adding nearly 1.5x AES Redondo's current capacity  in our part of the grid, it becomes crystal clear: a new plant is not needed in Redondo.