TVA shuts last coal unit at Alabama plant

OREANDA-NEWS. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) will shut down the last unit at the Widows Creek coal-fired power plant in Alabama as a result of new federal coal ash regulations.

The 499MW unit 7 was the only operational part of the 8-unit 1,969MW Widows Creek plant. The other six units have been idle for more than a year and will be retired this year. TVA idled the 475MW unit 8 in October 2014.

The US Environmental Protection Agency's final rule regulating the disposal of coal combustion byproducts goes into effect on 14 October. The rule sets minimum criteria for existing and new landfills that hold and contain coal combustion byproducts and sets closure requirements for unlined surface impoundments or landfills that are unable to meet certain performance standards.

"The ash pond for the [Widows Creek unit 7] will reach capacity as early as next spring. As a result, we will need to set a retirement date for the final unit earlier than we had planned," TVA president Bill Johnson told the federal agency's board today.

The board approved the unit's retirement. Johnson said the unit will shut by October.

The utility already has been cutting its reliance on coal generation. TVA's draft integrated resource plan projects the need for 800MW to 4,800MW of new natural gas-fired generation and as much as 12,000MW of wind and solar generation among its options to meet demand economically through 2033. No new coal plants are included in the plan.

Coal accounted for 34pc of the authority's power supply over the October 2014-March 2015 period, down from 36pc over the year-earlier period. Nuclear and natural gas-fired generation grew by two percentage points each, to 35pc and 9pc, respectively.

During fiscal 2014, 47pc of the utility's coal purchases came from the Illinois basin, 36pc from the Powder River basin in Wyoming, 14pc from Utah and Colorado and 3pc from Appalachia.

The new 1,150 unit 2 at the Watts Bar nuclear plant in Tennessee will be on line on schedule and on budget, senior vice president of Watts Bar nuclear operations and construction Mike Skaggs told the board. TVA expects the reactor to start commercial operations in December, becoming the first new nuclear reactor to come on line in the US in nearly two decades.