QFER Power Plant Heat Rates
Following an Order Instituting Rulemaking initiated in October 2005, amendments adopted by the Energy Commission and approved by California's Office of Administrative Law in July 2007 created two articles: Article 1, known as Quarterly Fuel and Energy Report (QFER) directed at current California energy information, and Article 2 directed at the forecast and assessment of energy loads and resources. The regulations under QFER provide for the collection of energy data relating to electric generation, control area exchanges, and natural gas processing and deliveries. The reports are submitted on forms specified by the Energy Commission's executive director.
The statistics presented here are derived from the QFER CEC-1304 Power Plant Owner Reporting Form. The CEC-1304 reporting form collects data from power plants with a total nameplate capacity of 1MW or more that are located within California or within a control area with end users inside California. The information includes gross generation, net generation, fuel use by fuel type for each generator, as well as total electricity consumed on site and electricity sales for the plant as a whole. Power plants with nameplate capacity of 20 megawatts or more also provide environmental information related to water supply and water/wastewater discharge.
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Column Key for Heat Rate
"Heat Rate" is a broad measure of thermal efficiency of a power plant in the conversion of fuel into electricity. It measures the amount of heat input in Btus per hour for each kilowatt-hour of electricity produced.
Category: Broad classifications for power plants:
- G = Natural Gas
- S = Solar
- T = Geothermal
- N = Nuclear
- C = Coal
- E = Biomass
- H = Hydro
- W = Wind
Plant ID: The CEC Plant ID is a unique identifier used by the Cartography Unit to track power plants.
Company Name: The last recorded company name that owns the power plant.
Plant Name: The name given for the plant by the company owner. May be different from other common references in use in other proceedings, hearings, etc.
Year: The calendar year for the data.
Capacity (MW): Total nameplate capacity of the power plant in the given year in megawatts.
Net Generation (MWh): Total energy produced by the plant for the given year in megawatt-hours.
Total Fuel Use (MMBtu): Total primary fuel consumed by the plant in a year as measured in MMBtu.
Heat Rate: The heat rate as expressed in Btu/kWh.