Dive Brief:
- Appalachian Power has asked West Virginia regulators for permission to shutter two coal-fired plants after determining it did not make economic sense to convert the facilities to burn natural gas, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reports.
- The company wants to shutter the Philip Sporn Power Plant in West Virginia and the Glen Lyn plant in Virginia, after deciding that a new gas-fired plant could be constructed for about the same price as retrofits. However, it will consider retrofitting a third plant, the Kanawha River coal plant, for natural gas.
- In July, the West Virginia Public Service Commission directed the utility to consider the future of its plants, including the possibility that they might be kept online for four years in order to convert them to cleaner fuels in the future.
Dive Insight:
Three months after regulators in West Virginia asked Appalachian Power to take a hard look at the future of several coal plants, including the possibility of converting them to burn natural gas, the company decided two facilities couldn't make the cut.
Three of the plants under consideration have recently closed because of age and inability to meet federal regulations over mercury and sulfur air emissions. Now the utility wants to dismantle two of those plants while leaving open the possibility to retrofit the other as a natural gas plant, the utility said in its filing with the state's Public Service Commission.
The utility's filing explained it may make more sense to construct a new gas-fired facility.
"The cost of converting and operating the Sporn Units or Glen Lyn Unit 6 would be significantly more than the cost of installing and operating new gas-fired capacity," the company said.
According to the Charleston Gazette-Mail, the Sporn facility could cost more than $200 million to convert to natural gas, and would likely produce about 300 MW. At Glyn Lyn, it could cost more than $235 million to convert the plant to produce 235 MW.
By comparison, Appalachian Power said converting its Kanawha River plant would turn out 400 MW with a price tag less than $115 million.
The decision to close the plants appears to align with the company's summer announcement that it had upped its renewables goals, and expected within 15 years to be generating more than 20% of its power from clean sources.
