[meyer]

In another life when I used to work for wages, we all in the engineering department said that plant operators never wanted to take downtime or spend the money to do proper preventive maintenance, yet invariably spent more money and lost more time when the equipment cratered.

That still holds true today to varying degrees. I've seen it a lot in the power industry over the years. And with Obama's war on coal, even more so as utilities forego maintenance to keep units on line while decommissioning functionally sound plants. For no good reason, I'll add.

[abb]

Coal is so un-pc. But it can’t be beat as a fuel. It really bothers me to drive out through the Great Plains and see all those stupid windmills. Without huge taxpayer funded subsidies, they wouldn’t be viable. The same with solar. Plus, you have to keep conventional capacity on standby for when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.