What’s The Future Of Connecticut’s Only Nuclear Plant?
A bill that could change the way Connecticut’s only nuclear power plant sells its energy is taking shape at the state capitol. Officials at Millstone Power Station are asking legislators to let them sell electricity directly to utilities.
As commodities go, electricity is unique. It’s generated, shot out to the grid, and for the most part, consumed in real time.
Kevin Hennessy is with Dominion Resources, operator of the Millstone Power Station in Waterford.
As we stand by a buzzing transformer at their plant he said, “there’s no real meaningful storage of electricity yet. It’s too expensive. It’s not to scale.”
And that’s key, Hennessy said, to understanding why Millstone sells power the way it does.
“What we do here, at Millstone, is we actually sell our power forward — to hedge funds and other financial groups,” Hennessy said.
Electricity prices can be volatile — subject to supply, demand, and weather. So at Millstone, a “baseload” generator that’s online pretty much all the time, they guard against that volatility by selling power credits today that will be consumed years from now, when prices could be different.
