An executive with the parent company of Tampa Electric said the utility plans to seek regulatory approval to convert its Big Bend Power Station in Florida, the oldest and last major coal-fired facility in its fleet, to natural gas.

Rob Bennett, speaking at a breakfast gathering in Tampa on January 12, said an engineering analysis of the switch has been underway for a few years. “It’s a big decision,” said Bennett, who was named CEO of newly formed Emera Technologies last month after overseeing Emera Inc.’s integration with TECO Energy, which Emera Inc. acquired in July 2016. TECO has operated Tampa Electric for many years. “It has to work. It has to make sense for 35 or 40 years,” Bennett said of the plan.

Big Bend has four coal-fired units, the first of which came online in 1970; Unit 4 began operation in 1985. The 1,730-MW plant in Apollo Beach, south of Tampa across Tampa Bay, has a troubled history; most recently, five workers at the plant, including a senior plant manager and four contract workers, were killed in an accident June 29, 2017, which occurred as the workers were trying to clean hardened slag, a by-product of burning coal, from the bottom of a tank where slag cools.…

Read More »