coal plants closing

I heard on the news yesterday that 5 coal plants in Penn. were closing due to the fact that they couldnt afford to put in all the news polution control regulations the Obama goverment has enacted . Has anyone else heard this and if true how will this affect coal availability and price ?

The Sierra Club said in a statement that closing the plants will prevent about 179 premature deaths, 300 heart attacks and 2,800 asthma attacks each year.

So if I have an asthma attack from this point forward, I'm holding the Sierra Club personally responsible. With this info, I guess I can stop taking my asthma meds.


Wonder how many heart attacks your new electric bills in PA will generate, due to the lack of plants? These people are unbelievable.

The demand for electricity is falling by the year. Prices were supposed
to rise when the caps were removed early this year. Prices have gone down.
They have no need for these plants. The envri freeks take credit, but had
nothing to do with the decision.

The sierra guy in the article said "building a windfarm is cheaper than building a new coal plant" Ok when the wind plant isn't producing where is the electricity going to come from? I guess it will come from magic pixies.


Eric

I was hauling flyash out of both the Elrama & Mitchell power plants in the late 80s & 90s & they knew they would have to close way back then, Elrama was owned by Duquesne Light & Mitchell by West Penn Power they probably sold them off to another Co. that ran them even farther into the ground. Those two have had their replacements on line for some time now.

Coalfire wrote:The sierra guy in the article said "building a windfarm is cheaper than building a new coal plant" Ok when the wind plant isn't producing where is the electricity going to come from? I guess it will come from magic pixies.


Eric

That's the main problem with with wind and solar, they're not reliable for "base load" like good ole fossil fuels are.

Most if not all of the plants involved have already been replaced & were off line for the most part. I know the Elrama plant had installed scrubbers but the new owners kept getting caught shutting them off at night.

There was an interesting article in the paper not long ago.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12017/1203944-28-0.stm

There may be gold in them thar er a toilets.
http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/news_room/pdf ... _power.pdf

With all of the modern scrubbing technology and the super efficient burning of pulverized coal dust, I wonder if it is a proven fact that natural gas is actually all that much cleaner burning than coal with regard to the generation of electricity at this juncture, or if the eco friendly news media just throws out trite tidbits that they know their otherwise uninformed Obama worshipping readership will eat up?

Larry

With coal I think the bigger problem is after the fact, the disposal of the waste material (flyash) has driven the cost up. The few modern plants are probably competitive but like most things the sins of years gone by ended up ruining the business in the long run. Ash used to be dumped & run type thing at one time like they have been caught in many businesses. Now the technology has caught up to where the flyash can be a usable product but too long after the fact. The power plants brought a lot on themselves, most of the plants that are closing have been on line for decades with what worked when built but now it's cheaper to build new rather than retrofit.

typically, the larger, older plants that have been well-maintained with readily available design fuel produce power for about half the cost of the newest plants. Some companies will run older plants "into the ground" if it is their business strategy to do so. Even with increased maintenance costs on some older units, the large older plants will sell power at about half the price and make the owners money. With the exception of some smaller plants which have unique design fuel requirements (such as AES westover), it is a myth that older plants are "inefficient and can't compete with NG"

High taxes and fees, high coal cost, low wholesale prices for electric, low cost of marcella shale gas are causing problems for coal plants.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communi ... 751168.ece