Peaking Power Plant - Peak Hours

Peak Hours

In the United States, peak hours usually occur in the afternoon, especially during the summer months when the air conditioning load is high. During this time many workplaces are still open and consuming power. Peak hours can also occur in the evening after work hours, when household appliances are heavily used.

A peaker plant may operate many hours a day, or it may operate only a few hours per year, depending on the condition of the region's electrical grid. Because of the cost of building an efficient power plant, if a peaker plant is only going to be run for a short or highly variable time it does not make economic sense to make it as efficient as a base load power plant. In addition, the equipment and fuels used in base load plants are often unsuitable for use in peaker plants because the fluctuating conditions would severely strain the equipment. For these reasons, nuclear, geothermal, waste-to-energy, coal, biomass and electrochemical energy storage systems are rarely, if ever, operated as peaker plants.