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POWER Notebook: New 1,600-MW Coal Plant in India; Low-Price Solar Deal in Idaho

April 9, 2019

Financing has reportedly been secured for a 1,600-MW coal-fired power plant in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand. Qatar’s Gulf Times newspaper reported April 6 that Power Finance Corp., a state-run lender in India, and its subsidiary REC approved a $ 1.5 billion loan for the project. The report said the new plant would be funded through loans and equity, with Power Finance and REC covering the entire cost of the project, which Bloomberg estimated at just more than $ 2.1 billion.

The plant is being designed to sell power to Bangladesh through a power purchase agreement with the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB). Adani Power Limited, part of India’s Adani Group, one of the world’s largest coal-mining companies, is building the plant. People familiar with the project reportedly said the plant is eligible for tax breaks, as India’s commerce ministry has designated the region as a special economic zone, and the plant as an export industrial facility. BPDB said Bangladesh currently gets about 56% of its power generation from natural gas, with oil and diesel providing most of the rest.…

Gas Now Tops Coal in PJM, but Nuclear Still No. 1

March 20, 2019

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A report from an independent market monitor for PJM Interconnection shows that natural gas-fired power generation topped coal-fired output in PJM in 2018, the first time that gas has topped coal in the history of the largest U.S. grid operator.

The “2018 State of the Market” report from Monitoring Analytics LLC, which includes Volume 1 and Volume 2, was released March 14. It showed that while nuclear power continues to lead PJM electricity production, at 34.2%, natural gas-fired generation accounted for 30.6% of PJM’s power mix last year, while coal-fired units provided 28.6% of the region’s power.

The report showed that gas-fired generation in PJM rose by more than 18% in 2018. Coal generation dropped by 6.6%, and nuclear generation fell by 0.5%.

PJM serves 65 million people in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia.

“This winter confirms what we have been seeing in PJM recently,” said PJM President and CEO Andrew L. Ott in a March 18 news release.…

Carbon Capture Proposed to Save New Mexico Coal Plant

March 3, 2019

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The New York-based hedge fund aiming to take over New Mexico’s San Juan Generating Station (SJGS), targeted for closure by state lawmakers, wants to refit the 46-year-old, coal-fired plant to use carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology.

Acme Equities LLC said last week that retrofitting the 847-MW plant with CCS technology would cut carbon emissions by 90% and offer the plant another revenue stream—selling the captured CO₂to help produce oil. Acme is negotiating with local Farmington, N.M., officials to take over the San Juan plant, a major employer in the area, and keep it operating.

Injecting carbon dioxide into older oil fields has been done for years to encourage wells to continue producing oil.

But state lawmakers expressed doubts about the technology even as they pushed a bill (Senate Bill 489) that would close the plant by 2022, limit the financial hit to the plant’s current ownership, and preserve tax revenue for local schools.

Lawmakers wondered about the economic viability of the CCS technology during discussions March 2 with the state’s Senate Corporations and Transportation Committee.…

Groups Reach Deal to Keep New Mexico Coal Plant Open

February 25, 2019

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A private New York-based real estate investment company that focuses on North American energy projects has reached an agreement with officials in Farmington, New Mexico, to keep the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station open beyond 2022.

The city is part-owner of the 847-MW plant, and the other owners—which include Tucson Electric Power, Los Alamos County, and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, along with majority owner Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM)—have said they do not plan to receive power from the SJGS after 2022. The agreement with Acme Equities LLC, a hedge fund founded by Jason Selch in 2012, was reached late February 23, according to a news release from the city.

Farmington officials have worked to find a new operator for the plant after PNM in 2017 said it would close the plant’s two remaining units in 2022, 30 years ahead of schedule. According to a plant fact sheet, PNM owns 46% of the SJGS.

Several California-owned utilities formerly owned some of the plant’s generation, but they ended their ownership agreements in 2017 after 2015 legislation in California required them to divest from coal-fired generation.…

EPA: Mercury Rules for Coal, Oil Power Units Not ‘Appropriate and Necessary’

December 28, 2018

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Because compliance costs to coal- and oil-fired power plants for the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) far exceed quantifiable benefits to regulating hazardous air pollutant (HAP) emissions, the Trump administration has proposed it is not “appropriate and necessary” to regulate HAP emissions from power plants under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act (CAA), according to a document signed by acting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Andrew Wheeler on Dec. 27.

However, the EPA did not propose to remove coal- and oil-fired power plants from the list of source categories regulated under that section of the CAA, which means the 2012-finalized MATS remains in place. The EPA’s proposal, released publicly Dec. 28, is outlined in a revision to the agency’s final supplemental cost finding for MATS, which was required by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 2015.

The agency on Friday also made public proposed results of the long-awaited MATS risk and technology review (RTR). The separate evaluations of risk and technology are required under CAA Section 112 every eight years after final HAP standards go into effect to determine if new developments should be incorporated into the standards.…

NERC: Accelerated Coal and Nuclear Retirements Pose Limited Reliability Risks

December 20, 2018

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The accelerated retirement of coal-fired and nuclear generation by 2022 could adversely affect reliability in four regions, including in the east and over a swathe of the central U.S., the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) warned as it released findings from a “stress-test” scenario.

But the entity tasked with ensuring reliability and security of the North American bulk power system (BPS) also noted six of 10 assessment areas—which cover PJM, New England, MISO, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and the Western coast—would have enough generation capacity to maintain peak demand, even if they see high levels of generator retirements over the next five years.

A “Stress-Test” Scenario

The findings stem from NERC’s Dec. 18–released “Generation Retirement Scenario,” which the entity evaluated because, it said, the retirement of traditional baseload generators and their rapid replacement with natural gas–fired, wind, and solar generation “is changing the characteristics of the BPS and introducing new considerations for reliability planning.”

The so-called “stress-test” scenario essentially assumes that areas where coal and nuclear currently make up a large share of resource levels will see accelerated retirements so that by 2022, they will lose 30% of their coal capacity and 45% of their nuclear capacity.…