The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has moved to retire its iconic 1.3-GW Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee in 2027 and substitute it—with notable urgency—with a 1.5-GW trendy advanced that includes a mixed cycle gasoline turbine (CCGT) plant, aero-derivative generators, 100 MW of battery storage, and as much as 4 MW of photo voltaic technology.
The nation’s largest public energy firm stated its “tough” resolution unveiled on April 2 to retire the nine-unit coal facility in Roane County follows a multi-year public course of. In a report of resolution (ROD), TVA stated the “want for [Kingston] to function at full capability has decreased” given the evolution of its producing fleet over the previous 10 to fifteen years—primarily pushed by additions of nuclear, gasoline, and renewable sources.
TVA stated it had resorted to extra frequent biking of Kingston’s items to fulfill fluctuating hundreds. “Nonetheless, [Kingston] was not designed for a majority of these operations, which presents reliability challenges which can be tough to anticipate and costly to mitigate,” it stated. The coal plant’s design capability of 1.7 GW had fallen to a summer season web producing capability of 1.3 GW, given the “results of getting old tools and long-term gas mix modifications,” TVA famous. “As TVA continues to transition the remainder of its fleet to cleaner and extra versatile applied sciences, [Kingston] will frequently be challenged to function reliably,” it stated.
The utility additionally highlighted the “important financial funding” required to adjust to federal environmental guidelines, together with the Environmental Safety Company’s 2020 Effluent Limitation Pointers. “Continued operation of [Kingston] past 2027 would create operational, and due to this fact reliability dangers in TVA’s system because of the deteriorating situation of the coal items,” the ROD notes.
As well as, if Kingston’s operation continued past 2027, it could “probably end in cascading delays for the later deliberate retirements in TVA’s phased 2035 coal fleet retirement plan and trigger delay in TVA’s plans to combine extra photo voltaic and storage belongings onto the system,” it stated. “Thus, [Kingston] was advisable for retirement by the tip of 2027.”
An Urgency to Exchange Kingston’s Era with 1.5 GW by 2027
Kingston’s technology shall be changed with the operation of a pure gas-fired CCGT mixed with 16 dual-fueled aero-derivative combustion generators, a 3 MW to 4 MW photo voltaic web site, a 100-MW battery storage web site, together with a brand new 161-kV switchyard on the Kingston Reservation. “This shall be a first-of-its-kind facility at TVA,” the utility famous.
A TVA spokesperson advised POWER the ROD kicks off the expertise choice and procurement course of. “Till now no choices have been made,” he stated. Nonetheless, he famous TVA is focusing on beginning operations on the gas-fired energy plant earlier than Kingston is retired on the finish of 2027. The ROD underscores that urgency, noting that the substitute technology “should proceed to keep up the planning reserve margins and to offer transmission system voltage help to the native space that’s wanted to keep up total system stability and reliability.”
For now, TVA plans to provide the brand new gas-fired items with gas procured by way of a brand new 122-mile pure gasoline pipeline, dubbed the “Ridgeline Growth Challenge.” East Tennessee Pure Gasoline (ETNG) will construct the pipeline and related compressor station, and metering and regulation amenities. The pipeline mission would require approval from the Federal Power Regulatory Fee (FERC).
The substitute plan is a most popular different outlined in TVA’s 2019 Built-in Useful resource Plan (IRP), which led the utility to start conducting end-of-life evaluations of its working coal-fired fleet. These evaluations finally led the utility to conclude that retiring its whole coal fleet by 2035 would “align with least-cost planning and scale back financial, reliability, and environmental dangers.”
The urgency to construct substitute technology can also be bolstered by Kingston’s distinctive location in East Tennessee, TVA suggests. Whereas the utility has an energetic interconnection queue of near 30 GW, greater than half is for photo voltaic and storage, and TVA acknowledges a “significant slice” could also be non-viable. In the meantime, “Renewable initiatives in queue are typically situated in areas which can be extra appropriate for photo voltaic, equivalent to West Tennessee, North Alabama, and North Mississippi, not within the East Tennessee area the place [Kingston] is situated,” the ROD notes. “The queued initiatives are usually not able to assembly the aim and have to help technology within the East Tennessee area and to offer substitute capability by the tip of 2027.”
Nonetheless, in line with TVA President and CEO Jeff Lyash, the chance to construct substitute technology might provide stable new prospects as decarbonization builds momentum. Modern gas-fired expertise supplies choices, he famous. It’s “expertise that, in the long term, could also be hydrogen gas, it may be backed with carbon seize when that expertise is out there,” he stated on Tuesday. “This advantages power safety and sustainability right here in japanese Tennessee and throughout our entire seven-state footprint.”
Kingston Fossil Plant: An Iconic Coal Plant
Nonetheless, TVA’s resolution to exchange Kingston’s coal-fired items is monumental. Whereas TVA started its coal-fired building program within the Forties to hold out its authentic mission to spur financial improvement within the Tennessee Valley and Appalachia, the vast majority of its coal items have been positioned in service between 1951 and 1973.
However at the moment, TVA operates solely 4 coal-fired energy crops, a dramatic discount from simply 10 years in the past, when TVA produced 74,583 GWh—or about 52% of its whole technology—from 53 energetic items at 11 coal crops. Together with Kingston, TVA’s coal-fired working fleet contains the two.5-GW, two-unit Cumberland station in Tennessee, 4 items on the 976-MW Gallatin plant in Tennessee, and the 1.2-GW, nine-unit Shawnee plant in Kentucky.
A map exhibiting TVA’s belongings throughout its seven-state footprint. Supply: TVA
In 2023, TVA authorized the retirement of Cumberland, which has operated since 1968, by 2028, transferring to exchange it with a 1,450-MW pure gas-fired CCGT. Cumberland’s gasoline items are slated to be on-line by the tip of 2026, when the primary coal unit retires, a spokesperson advised POWER. “No choices have been made on the retirement of Gallatin and Shawnee,” he added. At Shawnee, notably, TVA is slated to pioneer a utility-scale photo voltaic technology web site (dubbed Challenge Phoenix) constructed on the plant’s closed 309-acre coal ash web site utilizing a patented closure cap system known as ClosureTurf.
Over the previous 12 months, in the meantime, TVA has added about 1.5 GW of recent gas-fired technology. These embrace three combustion turbine items, a mixed 750 MW, on the Colbert Combustion Turbine web site in North Alabama. In December 2023, it added one other 750 MW with three new items on the Paradise Mixed Cycle plant close to Drakesboro, Kentucky. Extra gasoline items are slated to come back on-line over the subsequent few years. Together with the Cumberland CCGT, TVA plans so as to add 500 MW of peaking aero-derivative combustion generators at Johnsonville in late 2024 and 300 MW of photo voltaic at Lawrence County and Shawnee by late 2028.
Kingston’s 9 items have been constructed between 1951 and 1955 on the 2,254-acre Kingston Reservation on the Clinch and Emory rivers in Harriman, Roane County, as an answer to fulfill the rising demand for power from the close by Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory. The nationwide lab, on the time, “was ramping up manufacturing of atomic protection materials because of the Korean battle,” TVA notes. When it was completed in 1955, Kingston “stood as the biggest coal-burning energy plant on this planet—a distinction it held for greater than a decade,” it says. Whereas the plant burned about 14,000 tons of coal a day, it furnished the area with dependable energy—of about 10 TWh a 12 months.
The plant’s historic legacy, nevertheless, additionally features a devastating coal ash catastrophe in December 2008, which launched 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry. The catastrophe stemming from a damaged dike was stated to have left 4 or 5 toes of water and dust over 250 to 400 acres of rural land. The incident prompted the Obama administration to develop new guidelines regulating coal combustion ash. TVA has since carried out a number of measures to observe and include its coal ash from working and shuttered coal crops. In 2022, TVA recycled 82% of the coal ash produced for the manufacture of wallboard and cement, in addition to a substitute for Portland cement in concrete.
A ‘Very Troublesome’ Choice
TVA’s executives on Tuesday hailed Kingston’s 70-year legacy and its regional significance. “Kingston has been a workhorse for TVA for over 70 years. It’s a part of the success of this area,” stated Lyash. “And so it’s with nice pleasure that we transfer on from these items and retire, however they must be changed. The realm is rising,” he added. “Retiring these items and changing them with expertise that’s extra dependable, extra resilient, and cleaner is just not a straightforward resolution, however it’s the best factor to do for our power safety going ahead.”
Kris Edmondson, TVA vp of Energy Operations, additionally famous the choice to retire the long-lasting plant was “very tough,” given its place in TVA tradition. “One of the difficult issues once you retire a coal plant is the impression on the individuals. And at Kingston, we’ve acquired nearly 200 workers there,” he stated.
“They’re very dedicated, gifted craftsmen, operations, upkeep [who] have achieved an distinctive job assembly the mission. And so for every of them, once we say we’re closing a plant, it’s impactful. It’s a component of uncertainty—[they ask] what’s subsequent for me?” he stated. “And so one of many issues that’s actually necessary for us as we make this transition is ensuring we help all of our workers with subsequent steps.”
Edmonton stated TVA already has an in depth workforce plan in place to “keep coal plant experience and supply alternatives for workers to guage choices and put together for subsequent profession steps.” The plan contains alternatives to switch to different TVA places “the place worker skillsets are wanted, positions in different applied sciences providing coaching to help the transition to a brand new job in TVA, and supporting workers all for retiring,” he stated.
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
