Coal | EnergyNorthwest.com

Last New York Coal Plant Set to Close

November 24, 2019

The post Last New York Coal Plant Set to Close appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The last operating coal-fired power plant in New York state could close by mid-February. Somerset Operating Co. on Nov. 15 asked the New York State Public Service Commission to waive the state’s 180-day notice requirement to shutter the 675-MW plant, asking regulators to allow the facility to close as early as Feb. 15, 2020.

Somerset in a news release Monday said it is retiring the plant due to stricter state emissions regulations, and also said poor economics led to its decision. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state regulators earlier this year adopted rules to further reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, designed to end coal-fired power generation in the state by year-end 2020. The state also has set a goal of 100% carbon-free energy by 2040.

Owner Plans Data Center at Site

The plant’s owner, Riesling Power LLC, has proposed building a $ 550 million data center on the 1,800-acre site of the Somerset plant, located on the shore of Lake Ontario in Niagara County.…

Report: Nearly 80% of EU Coal Units Operate at a Loss

October 27, 2019

| No Comments

| Industry News

The post Report: Nearly 80% of EU Coal Units Operate at a Loss appeared first on POWER Magazine.

A new report from a group that studies the impact of climate change on financial markets recommends that European Union (EU) governments move to phase out coal-fired power generation completely by 2030 in order to avoid even-greater economic damage.

Carbon Tracker, a London, UK-based group supported by foundations in Europe and the U.S., on Oct. 24 released its Apocoalypse Now report. The study said European utilities could lose as much as $ 7.3 billion in 2019 from operations of coal-fired power plants. The group said nearly 80% of coal units in Europe are not economic, up from about 46% of units just two years ago.

Matt Gray, head of Power & Utilities for Carbon Tracker, in an email to POWERsaid, “In this report, we explain the financial implications of recent changes to EU coal power economics. In doing so, we argue EU policymakers and investors need to prepare for no hard coal or lignite generation by 2030.…

Facility to Make Coal Cleaner, More Efficient, Taking Shape in Wyoming

October 14, 2019

| No Comments

| Industry News

The post Facility to Make Coal Cleaner, More Efficient, Taking Shape in Wyoming appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Clean Coal Technologies Inc. (CCTI) has begun reassembling a test facility designed to produce a cleaner-burning and more-efficient coal. The coal beneficiation and byproducts extraction plant, first built in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for an initial test of the technology, and then moved to Gillette, Wyoming, is expected to be completely rebuilt in the next few months, a company official told POWER on Oct. 9.

CCTI in 2017 touted its process, saying it had developed “the world’s first commercially viable and scalable coal dehydration technology” designed to upgrade the Btu content of lower-ranking coal “through the extraction of volatile material in liquid form,” ultimately producing a “cleaner burning, dry coal.” The process of improving coal quality is known as beneficiation, a technique in which the quality of raw coal is improved, either by reducing the extraneous matter that is extracted with mined coal, or reducing the associated ash, or both.…

Vistra Will Close Another Illinois Coal Plant

September 18, 2019

| No Comments

| Industry News

The post Vistra Will Close Another Illinois Coal Plant appeared first on POWER Magazine.

A Vistra Energy subsidiary on Sept. 16 said it will close the nearly 60-year-old E.D. Edwards coal-fired plant in Bartonville, Illinois, by year-end 2022 under a settlement between the company and environmental groups the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Respiratory Health Association. The groups made a joint announcement Monday of the agreement.

The environmental groups had sued in 2013 in an attempt to force the plant to adhere to emissions regulations. Vistra, in its second-quarter 2019 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, said a bench trial in the case had been scheduled for the end of September. “We dispute the allegations and will defend the case vigorously,” the company said in the SEC filing earlier this year, prior to the settlement.

Vistra’s Illinois power-generation unit—Illinois Power Resources Generating (IPRG), an affiliate of Vistra-owned Luminant—in a statement Monday said: “The proposed settlement resolves a long-running lawsuit while providing three years of certainty for the more than 70 employees working at the Edwards plant and, importantly, a transition period for the community to plan for the plant closure.…

SwRI to Design Flameless, Low-Emission Coal Combustion Pilot

August 17, 2019

| No Comments

| Industry News

San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) said on Aug. 12 it will get $ 3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and another $ 760,658 from an assortment of industry giants to design a large-scale flameless pressurized oxy-fuel combustion pilot plant.

The announcement is a major boost for the promising, but yet unproven technology, that industry observers herald as a groundbreaking new approach to utility-scale power generation. As SwRI explained, “the process uses air that is stripped of other elements like argon and nitrogen until it is pure oxygen. It is then combined with a fuel, usually either coal or natural gas, into a stream of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water inside a combustor. The fuel and oxygen chemically react, and the hot gas can be used to boil steam, which pushes a turbine that generates power.”

Among the benefits of pressurized oxy-fuel combustion is that it has the potential to substantially improve overall cycle efficiency. Because it uses oxygen-rich combustion, it could also generate pure CO₂ that can be easily captured and stored, or reused.…

FES Will Close Mansfield Coal Plant Early

August 13, 2019

| No Comments

| Industry News

FirstEnergy Solutions (FES) said it will close the Bruce Mansfield power plant in Pennsylvania in November, two years ahead of the previously scheduled closure for the facility’s remaining coal-fired unit.

FES in a statement August 9 cited a “lack of economic viability in current market conditions” for the decision to shutter the 830-MW Unit 3, which had been set to close in June 2021. Units 1 and 2 at the plant, each with 830 MW of generation capacity, were taken offline in February, just more than a year after a fire at the plant damaged equipment. Those units also had been scheduled to close in June 2021.

FES in a press release Friday said “deactivation activities” at Bruce Mansfield should be complete by May 2020. The group filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, as the company sought an “orderly financial restructuring.” FES at the time said both its coal-fired and nuclear power plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania were unprofitable.

Company officials in a statement Friday said, “The [Bruce Mansfield] deactivation will be safely and responsibly conducted in accordance with relevant regulations and guidelines.…