Plant Efficiency Driver

Driver Description

The Plant Efficiency Driver is an in-depth and comparative snapshot of electric generation plants across the United States. Plants included in this driver are owned and/or operated by FERC-regulated electric utilities and include financial and efficiency data from the FERC Form 1, and operational data from the EIA Form 860. The Driver includes plants that are reported in both the FERC Form 1 or EIA Form 860 with particular dashboards in the driver focusing on a particular dataset.

• Industry: Electric
• Sub-industry: Generation
• Data Timeline: Annual
• Geography: National/State/Local

Data Sources

FERC Form 1 (Annual Report of Major Electric Utilities)

• Schedules
• Steam Electric Generating Plant Statistics
• Hydroelectric Generating Plant Statistics
• Pumped Storage Generating Plant Statistics
• Small Generating Plant Statistics

EIA Form 860 (Annual Electric Generator Report)

• Plant
• Generator
• Wind
• Solar

Usage

The Plant Efficiency Driver allows for both an in-depth view on any single plant and the ability to compare that plant against others across the country and develop plant peer groups. The driver defaults to this page but you may access other parts of the driver via the table icon at the top-left of the driver.

The map defaults to showing all states and all plants by lat/long location. Clicking on a state in the map above will show you a state-specific view of all plants that are owned by FERC-regulated utilities and also report to the EIA. In this case, Alabama will be used as our example.

There are several different plants in the state. The plant key on the right-hand side shows what type of plants are within the state, along with filters you can select to help focus on a particular plant name, or the utility. Clicking on one of the plant dots will lead you to the plant deep dive. Let’s use the Greene County plant run by Alabama Power, just south of Tuscaloosa.

This is the Plant Deep Dive. Here you will find information on the plant where both FERC and EIA data come into view. Below is a quick explanation of this view.

Plant Deep Dive Descriptions

• Plant Financial Metrics: visualizes various financial metrics for the plant, such as maintenance cost, net generation (in kilowatt hours), and fuel cost. Clicking on the "select metric" dropdown will allow you to call out a particular metric from the visualization
• Source: FERC
• Special Note: the plant deep dive works for all plants, but only a subset of plants are also FERC-regulated. In the case of plants that are not FERC-regulated, no data will populate in this widget
• Generator Fuel Source: describes the fuel source(s) of each generator in the plant
• Source: EIA
• Generator Power: Describes the power factors, nameplate capacities, and minimum load for each generator in the plant
• Source: EIA

Now that you have an in-depth understanding of a single plant, a common question one may ask is “how does this plant stack up against other plants?” This is where the plant comparison tool becomes important. You can access the plant comparison by clicking the table icon at the top-left of the driver.

The Plant Comparison tool lists every plant that is common between HData’s EIA dataset and FERC dataset. Here, you can filter the table to focus on a particular state, plant type (nuclear, hydro, etc), company, year, or hone in on a particular plant. You can also filter the list based on several financial and operational metrics using the slider-filters at the top of the screen. Clicking on the building icon at the top-left of the driver will bring you back to the plant deep dive and map screen. Clicking on the line chart icon on the top-left will take you to the Plant Benchmarking tool.

Plant Benchmarking

The Plant Benchmark allows you to take a single plant, multiple plants, or a company and benchmark against the dataset average to determine how your selected group is performing relative to the entire country. You can filter based on the dropdown filters at the top of the screen. The benchmark will measure against a time-series between 2011 and 2021. You may filter to compare to a single year if you would like. Here are a couple of examples of scenarios:

1. If you select a single company, like Georgia Power Company, all plants under Georgia Power will be in the navy-blue and averaged based on the metrics in the visualization. This will then be superimposed on top of the dataset average in the grey bars behind the navy bars.

2. If you select a single plant, like the Vogtle Nuclear Plant from Georgia Power, it will benchmark in navy-blue the plant against the dataset average of nuclear plants in grey.

Exporting Visuals and Data

There are several ways in which the driver can be exported. A visual export of the driver via PDF or PowerPoint can be generated via the export button () at the top-right corner of the driver. Data can be exported via each card on the driver. To export data, move your cursor over the card/table and another export () button will appear at the top-right of the card/table. The data will export into a csv file in a long-table format. An additional feature is the expand icon on each card. Hovering your cursor over a card/table will show the export icon and the expand icon. The expand icon will give you a screen as seen below.

You can click on the export button at the top-right of the pop-up to export the visualization either in a visual format or the data behind the visualization via CSV or Excel. Clicking the table icon at the top-right of the pop-up will show you the data feeding into the visualization.