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Exelon Corporation
Case Study: Wind Power Marketing
In 2001, Exelon Corporation signed four twenty-year power purchase agreements for the
purchase of wind power in Pennsylvania making it the largest wind marketer east of the
Mississippi River. The wind power will be marketed by Exelon Power Team, Exelon’s
wholesale marketing operation. Collectively, the four agreements bring Exelon Power
Team’s zero emission wind portfolio to 151.6 megawatts (MW). This capacity is
projected to produce enough electrical output to power over 58,000 average homes
annually or the equivalent of approximately 411,600 zero emission megawatt hours
(MWhs) annually.1
Quantification of Emissions
The new Pennsylvania wind farms will feed clean electricity into a multi-state region that
includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Ohio,
New York, and part of Virginia. The zero emission wind power from these four wind
farms avoid greenhouse gases (GHG) and criteria air pollutants associated with
generating electricity from the resources providing power to the regional Pennsylvania,
New Jersey Maryland (PJM) Power Pool.2 In order to estimate the annual impacts of this
quantity of zero emission power being sold into the PJM grid, the baseline emission rates
as noted above are multiplied by the total annual estimated electric generation by the
wind farms.
Emission Reductions
Based upon PJM Power Pool average emission rates, the approximately 411,600 MWhs
generated collectively from the four wind farms avoids approximately 246,000 tons of
CO2, 580 tons of NOx, 1,850 tons of SO2 and 14,000 pounds of mercury emissions
annually. The main areas of uncertainty with the quantification of the emission
reductions are the annual generation of the wind farms and the emission factors used. The
average PJM Power Pool emission rates were used instead of the marginal emission rates
due to data availability. For future project monitoring and reporting actual metered
generation data will be retrospectively evaluated and a more precise PJM Power Pool
emission factor most likely the marginal rate will be calculated based on actual dispatch.
1
An average home is assumed to use 600 kWh per month or approximately 7 MWhs annually. Electric
generation projections are based on an average capacity factor of 31%.
2
For comparison, the current average mix of resources supplying the PJM includes: Coal (47%), Nuclear
(37%), Oil (4%), Natural Gas (9%), Hydro-electric (1%), and Other (2%).