Luminant used remnants of the ill-fated Twin Oaks and Forest Grove plants (which were mothballed more than 30 years ago) to build the new two-unit 1,600-MW Oak Grove Plant. Though outfitted with equipment from those old plants, Oak Grove also sports an array of modern air quality control equipment and is the nation’s first 100% lignite-fired plant to adopt selective catalytic reduction for NOx control and activated carbon sorbent injection technology to remove mercury. For melding two different steam generators into a single project, adopting a unique and efficient “push-pull” fuel delivery system, assembling a tightly integrated team that completed the project on time and within budget, and for completing what was started almost four decades ago, Oak Grove Power Plant is awarded POWER magazine’s 2010 Plant of the Year award
Luminant, a subsidiary of Energy Future Holdings Corp. (EFH)—which owns competitive and regulated energy subsidiaries in Texas—is the largest electricity generator in Texas. To Luminant’s credit, it took the hard road of constructing solid fuel plants instead of making the default decision to build more gas-fired generation when demand for electricity rose. With its three-plant program nearing completion, Luminant’s 18,300-MW portfolio remains the best balanced of any Texas generation company: about 8,000 MW each of coal-fired and natural gas–fired capacity and the remainder supplied by its 2,300-MW Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant. Luminant also has 900 MW of wind capacity under contract and a public commitment to increase that number to 1,500 MW, making it the largest wind power purchaser in Texas and the nation’s fifth-largest purchaser.
The type and amount of installed capacity is a good way to compare different generation companies, but so are actual generation statistics. In the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market, which represents about 75% of the electricity generation in the state, 70% of the electricity delivered is fired by natural gas and only 18% by coal. Luminant, on the other hand, used coal to fuel 67% of the megawatt-hours it generated in 2009. Next was nuclear (29%). Gas-fired generation (4%) filled in the gaps.
The stats clearly show that Luminant has a long history of using solid fuels and running its plants with high capacity factors. In addition, its plant operating staff are experts at squeezing low-cost electricity from lignite, a difficult coal to process and burn efficiently. In 2005, when Luminant (then TXU Power, a subsidiary of TXU Corp.) determined that additional generation was needed to meet expected load growth, it was only natural that the company would turn again to lignite.
You may recall TXU’s ill-fated plans to construct 11 new coal-fired units in 2006: Those plans immediately met a storm of opposition. After EFH, a consortium of private equity investors, purchased TXU for $45 billion in October 2007, it quickly scaled back the 11-plant program to a more palatable three-plant program that included Sandow 5 (completed September 2009) and the two units at Oak Grove (“substantial completion” December 2009 and June 2010). The cost of these three plants is reported at $3.25 billion.
The other smart move EFH made was striking a deal with the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council to put their stamps of approval on the three-plant deal. Later, in 2008, a similar arrangement was reached with the Sierra Club on mercury emission reductions to avoid costly litigation. These deals recognized and followed the company’s voluntary commitment to offset more than 100% of nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and mercury (Hg) emissions from the new plants by making reductions at its existing plants when the air permits for Oak Grove were applied for in July 2005. By the end of this year, EFH will have spent $1 billion to make that promise a reality. In fact, the entire coal fleet’s emissions were reduced by 20% below 2005 levels.
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