Microeconomics
21st Edition
ISBN: 9781259915727
Author: Campbell R. McConnell, Stanley L. Brue, Sean Masaki Flynn Dr.
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
expand_more
expand_more
format_list_bulleted
Videos
Textbook Question
Chapter 19, Problem 2P
A coal-fired power plant can produce electricity at a variable cost of 4 cents per kilowatt hour when running at its full capacity of 30 megawatts per hour, 16 cents per kilowatt hour when running at 20 megawatts per hour, and 24 cents per kilowatt hour when running at 10 megawatts per hour. A gas-fired power plant can produce electricity at a variable cost of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour at any capacity from 1 megawatt per hour to its full capacity of 5 megawatts per hour. The cost of constructing a coal-fired plant is $50 million, but it costs only $10 million to build a gas-fired plant. LO17.2
a. Consider a city that has a peak afternoon demand of 80 megawatts of electricity. If it wants all plants to operate at full capacity, what combination of coal-fired plants and gas-fired plants would minimize construction costs?
b. How much will the city spend on building that combination of plants?
c. What will the average cost per kilowatt-hour be if you average over all 80 megawatts that are produced by that combination of plants? (Hint: A kilowatt is one thousand watts, while a megawatt is one million watts),
d. What would the average cost per kilowatt-hour be if the city had instead built three coal-fired plants?
Expert Solution & Answer
Want to see the full answer?
Check out a sample textbook solution
Students have asked these similar questions
A coal-fired power plant can produce electricity at a variable cost of $0.04 per kilowatt-hour when running at its full capacity of 30
megawatts per hour, $0.16 per kilowatt-hour when running at 20 megawatts per hour, and $0.24 per kilowatt-hour when running at 10
megawatts per hour. A gas-fired power plant can produce electricity at a variable cost of $0.12 per kilowatt-hour at any capacity from 1
megawatt per hour to its full capacity of 5 megawatts per hour. The cost of constructing a coal-fired plant is $60 million, but it costs
only $12 million to build a gas-fired plant.
Instructions: In part b, enter your answer as a whole number. In parts c and d, round your answers to 2 decimal places.
a. Consider a city that has a peak afternoon demand of 80 megawatts of electricity. If it wants all plants to operate at full capacity, what
combination of coal-fired plants and gas-fired plants would minimize construction costs?
2 coal-fired plants and 4 gas-fired plants
16 gas-fired plants
1…
The Virginia PUC is considering a subsidy program to encourage consumers to install improved
insulation in walls and ceilings of homes as a way of reducing the need for building a new
CCGT plant. The insulation program would cost $1,500,000 and would save 10MWH of power.
What is the negawatt cost in MWh of this power savings?
Enter your answer here
Electricity is produced with water according to the
function:
E = 5 + 5W-1W²
where E = kilowatt-hour and W = gallons of water.
Water costs $0.02 per gallon. Electricity can be sold
on the grid for $0.10 per kWh (kilowatt-hour). How
much water should be purchased?
Knowledge Booster
Learn more about
Need a deep-dive on the concept behind this application? Look no further. Learn more about this topic, economics and related others by exploring similar questions and additional content below.Similar questions
- Suppose you manage a business that produces high-end dog food. The business produces 3,000 dog food cans per day, and can sell each can at $2.00/can regardless of how much is produced. Your firm currently employs 20 workers, each of whom earns $15/hour and work 8 hours per day. Inputs, like the meat for the food and the metal for the can, cost $1.00/can. Your overhead expenses, including rent, property taxes, insurance, etc., which does not vary with the number of cans produced, equals $250 per day. a. (3) Calculate your company’s current daily profit. You’re considering whether to hire additional workers to produce additional cans. Each worker would be paid $15/hr. and material costs remain constant at $1.00/can. You estimate the 21st employee would produce an additional 200 cans per day, and the number of additional cans from each additional worker would be decreasing by 40 (a 22nd employee could produce an additional 160 cans per day, a 23rd employee could produce an additional…arrow_forwardAn Apple Cars plant operates most efficiently (average unit cost is minimized) when producing 18,300 cars each month. It has a maximum output capability of 22,000 units per month (e.g., when its CEO, Tim Chef, forces everyone to work crazy amounts of overtime), and can make as few as 7,000 units per month without forcing the hand of executives to shift production to another plant. If the plant makes 12,770 cars in December, what was the capacity utilization rate? Round your final answer to 1 decimal place, and enter it as a percent without the percent sign; for example, use 18.9, not 18.9% or .2. Capacity utilization ratearrow_forward3.1. DRAM factory. You own and operate a facility located in Taiwan that manufac- tures 64-megabit dynamic random-access memory chips (DRAMs) for personal comput- ers (PCs). One year ago you acquired the land for this facility for $2 million, and used $3 million of your own money to finance the plant and equipment needed for DRAM manufacturing. Your facility has a maximum capacity of 10 million chips per year. Your cost of funds is 10% per year for either borrowing and investing. You could sell the land, plant, and equipment today for $8 million; you estimate that the land, plant, and equip- ment will gain 6% in value over the coming year. (Use a one-year planning horizon for this problem.) In addition to the cost of land, plant, and equipment, you incur various operating expenses associated with DRAM production, such as energy, labor, raw materials, and packaging. Experience shows that these costs are $4 per chip, regardless of the number of chips produced during the year. In…arrow_forward
- Agree or Disagree and Why: One year ago, I loaned a friend $1000 and he just paid me back the whole $1,000. The loan did not cost me anything. An oil refinery bought millions of barrels of oil four months ago for $80 per barrel, compared to $120 / barrel today. The cost of using those barrels of oil to produce gasoline today is still $80.arrow_forward= 2. The cost of operating a jet-powered commercial (passenger- carrying) airplane varies as the three-halves (3/2) power of its velocity; specifically, Co kny3/2, where n is the trip length in miles, k is a constant of proportionality, and vis velocity in miles per hour. It is known that at 400 miles per hour, the average cost of operation is $300 per mile. The company that owns the aircraft wants to minimize the cost of operation, but that cost must be balanced against the cost of the passengers' time (CC), which has been set at $300,000 per hour. At what velocity should the trip be planned to minimize the total cost, which is the sum of the cost of operating the airplane and the cost of passengers' time?arrow_forwardAntoine rents rooms in his hotel for an average of $100 per night. The variable cost per rented room is $20, to cover maid service and utilities. His fixed costs are $100,000 and his profit last year was $20,000. For Antoine, the contribution per unit is $100 $80 $1005 $800arrow_forward
- Suppose the cost of purchasing euros (EUR) and Canadian dollars (CAD) at the airport are given by the following bid / ask price: EUR 1 = USD 1.32 / 1.47 CAD 1 = USD 0.85 / 0.97 How much USD is required to purchase EUR 2,000? How much USD is required to purchase CAD 1,500? How much USD will you get if you’d like to sell EUR 500 to the airport’s currency exchange store? How much USD will you get if you’d like to sell CAD 500 to the airport’s currency exchange store? Calculate the percent spread or margin for USDEUR. Calculate the percent spread or margin for USDCAD.arrow_forwardAn electric power distributor charges residential customers $0.10 perkilowatt-hour (kWh). The company advertises that “green power” is available in 150 kWh blocks for an additional $4 per month. (Green power is generated from solar, wind power, and methane sources). Solve, a. If a certain customer uses an average of 400 kWh per month and commits to one monthly 150 kWh block of green power, what is her annual power bill? b. What is the average cost per kWh with green power during the year? c. Why does green power cost more than conventional power?arrow_forwardShunda is a calculator assembly company, purchase a full set of the calculator parts, assembled into a calculator to sell in the market. In recent years, the price of the calculator has remained steady at 60 yuan/units, the basic data of the input and output of shunda in 2013are listed in the table below: Hourly wage is 6 yuan per hour, price of parts is 25 yuan per set, power consumption is paid by 0.6 yuan per watt, the extract depreciation of equipment is 3 yuan per hour, and Shunda spends fixed costs 10000 yuan per month to pay all of the regular fee According to the above data, is it possible to estimate the production function and cost function (TC, TVC, AC and AVC)?arrow_forward
- Mary, a law student in a University, wants to buy a book on Negotiable Instruments. To do this, she thought of selling cakes to her classmates and schoolmates. To bake these cakes, she rents an oven at P1,400 and another P300 for the rental of the baking pan. She spends a total of P600 for the ingredients. She sells the cake at P300 each. How many cakes does she need to sell to break even? (Unit used is cakes. For example if your answer is 10, then write 10 cakes).arrow_forwardA brewery produces regular beer and a lower-carbohydrate "light" beer. Steady customers of the brewery buy 10 units of regular beer and 17 units of light beer monthly. While setting up the brewery to produce the beers, the management decides to produce extra beer, beyond that needed to satisfy customers. The cost per unit of regular beer is $29,000 and the cost per unit of light beer is $35,000. Every unit of regular beer brings in $100,000 in revenue, while every unit of light beer brings in $400,000 in revenue. The brewery needs at least $12,000,000 in revenue, and has determined that the total demand will be at least 45 units of beer. Complete parts (a) and (b). (a) How much of each type of beer should be made so as to minimize total production costs? 20 units of regular beer and 25 units of light beer should be made, for a minimum total cost of $ 1455000 (Type integers or decimals.) (b) Suppose the minimum revenue is increased to $12,600,000. Use shadow costs to calculate the total…arrow_forwardABC Company is the manufacturer of a low-noise air-purification system. Its current capacity is 10,000 units/month, but ABC received orders totaling 9,000 units each month. Currently, ABC sells its system at a price of $200 per unit, its fixed cost is $500,000/month, and its variable cost is $100/unit. Note that currently, half of ABC’s variable cost is materials, and the other half is labor cost (wages for workers). ABC wants to consider cutting its price by 10% to stimulate demand. If ABC expands its capacity, it will have to lease additional manufacturing machines, each of which will cost $20,000/month to lease and can add 1000 units to ABC’s capacity. All existing workers are already working full-time. So, if ABC expands production, ABC has to either pay existing employees for overtime (1.5 times the regular wages) or hire new workers, who are expected to be paid 90% of the hourly wage of existing workers but produce only 75% of the hourly output of existing workers. (a) What is…arrow_forward
arrow_back_ios
SEE MORE QUESTIONS
arrow_forward_ios
Recommended textbooks for you
Managerial Economics: Applications, Strategies an...EconomicsISBN:9781305506381Author:James R. McGuigan, R. Charles Moyer, Frederick H.deB. HarrisPublisher:Cengage Learning
Managerial Economics: Applications, Strategies an...
Economics
ISBN:9781305506381
Author:James R. McGuigan, R. Charles Moyer, Frederick H.deB. Harris
Publisher:Cengage Learning
Difference between Renewable and Nonrenewable Resources; Author: MooMooMath and Science;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLBK1ux5b7U;License: Standard Youtube License