FES to close all coal-fired & nuclear power plants
FirstEnergy Solutions says it intends to close its last coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio in 2021-2022, although those decisions could be reversed if the Ohio-based company were to get a federal bailout via the Trump administration, Kallanish Energy reports.
The bankrupt company is closing all of its coal-fired and nuclear power plants in the coming years. It says it needs federal government intervention to make old plants profitable.
FES will close the 2,490-megawatt Bruce Mansfield Power Plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, on June 1, 2021. Units 1-3 would be shut down.
It intends to close the 1,490 MW W.H. Sammis Power Plant at Stratton, Ohio, on June 1, 2022. That affects Units 5-7.
The plan also calls for closing a small diesel unit with 13 MW of power at Sammis and Unit 6 at the company’s Eastlake plant in Eastlake, Ohio. That involves 24 coal-fired MW.
The company late Wednesday notified PJM Interconnection LLC, the regional power transmission organization, of its plans to deactivate or close the four fossil-fueled plants with 4,017 MW of generating capacity.
The company, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., blamed the regional wholesale markets that do not value old coal and nuclear power plants for the closures.
It said the plants are closing “due to a market environment that fails to adequately compensate generators for the resiliency and fuel-security attributes that the plants provide.”
