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Vistra Backs Illinois Transition Measure to Keep At-Risk Coal Plants Online Through 2025

April 12, 2021

The post Vistra Backs Illinois Transition Measure to Keep At-Risk Coal Plants Online Through 2025 appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Bleeding financially from underperforming and legally burdened coal generation in downstate Illinois and elsewhere, Vistra, the nation’s largest competitive generator, has renewed its call for passage of the Illinois Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Act, a bill that could help keep 2.2 GW of existing at-risk capacity online through 2025 while the state expands its renewable and storage capacity.

The Irving, Texas–headquartered company said it renewed its support for the bill owing to “mounting financial and legal pressures that now come from operating coal plants.” The announcement came as the company accelerated the closure of the 1.2-GW Joppa Power Plant in September 2022—three years earlier than previously disclosed—to settle a complaint related to pollution exceedances in Illinois.

Vistra’s Heavily Burdened Coal Fleet

The Joppa plant, which opened in 1953, has six coal units with a combined capacity of 1 GW, as well as five natural gas units with a combined capacity of 239 MW.…

Survey: Nearly Half of Americans Know Someone Who Has Lost Their Job In Past 6 Months – Casper Star-Tribune Online

February 12, 2021

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Survey: Nearly Half of Americans Know Someone Who Has Lost Their Job In Past 6 Months Casper Star-Tribune Online
“job” – Google News…

China Brings 2.2-GW Solar Park Online

October 11, 2020

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The post China Brings 2.2-GW Solar Park Online appeared first on POWER Magazine.

A Chinese company announced it has brought the world’s second-largest solar farm into commercial operation. Sungrow, which supplies inverters for renewable energy projects, and the state-owned utility Huanghe Hydropower Development on Oct. 9 said a 2.2-GW capacity solar park in the northwest province of Qinghai is now online.

The Qinghai project trails only the 2.3-GW Bhadla solar park in India, which covers more than 10,000 acres and was completed late last year, in generation capacity.

The largest operating solar farm in the U.S. is the 579-MW Solar Star installation in California, which came online in 2015 and at the time was the largest solar array in the world. A larger U.S. project, the 690-MW Gemini solar and battery storage installation in Nevada, was approved earlier this year and is scheduled to be operational by year-end 2023.

Site Includes Energy Storage

The Qinghai project, which also includes 202.86 MWh of energy storage capacity, is located in the desert near the city of Xining.…

Pennsylvania Site Latest Gas Plant Online in Building Surge

June 26, 2020

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The post Pennsylvania Site Latest Gas Plant Online in Building Surge appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Gas-fired power generation in the U.S. remains the top source of electricity production, even as renewable energy continues to take market share. A POWER analysis of projects shows nearly 180 gas-fired units are either under construction or in development nationwide, with more than 2,000 gas-fired plants currently in operation.

One of the most-recent plants to come online is the $ 863 million, 1,000-MW Hickory Run Energy Center (Figure 1) near New Castle, Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh. The project’s developers, including Kansas-based Tyr Energy, a subsidiary of Japan’s ITOCHU Corp.; Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO); and Siemens Financial Services, in mid-June publicly announced that the plant began commercial operations in mid-May.

“We’ve been going pretty steadily. It’s in the market and producing electricity much of the time. This is an efficient unit. So we expect it to stay operational most of the time,” Brock Shealy, vice president of Hickory Run LLC and chief administrative officer of Tyr Energy, said in a statement.…