By measuring the performance ratio, power plant owners and operators can immediately and fully predict the performance of the plant over its lifetime, accurately assessing the value of the plant.
But bamboo is something of a tragic plant -- it only flower once in its lifetime -- and the Jiuzhai Valley bamboo flowered and died in the 1980s, depriving pandas of the food that makes up 99% of their diet.
Sadly, these and other simplified metrics are not focused on lifetime costs versus lifetime returns, and so they paint an inaccurate and short-term portrait of plant production.