Coal plant shutting as power mix shifts
Gibbons Creek Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant about 20 miles from Bryan, was already in mothball status after putting the state’s grid operator on notice earlier this year that it wouldn’t run this summer. Now, it’s closing for good.
The state’s grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, received notice from the city of Garland that the 470-megawatt plant would be retired permanently on Oct. 23. The Texas Municipal Power Agency, a group comprising the cities of Bryan, Garland, Denton and Greenville, owns the plant.
Officials of the consortium couldn’t be reached for comment.
Gibbons Creek is at least the fifth coal-fired power plant in Texas to shutter over the past two years, and more are likely to follow. Vistra Energy of Irving last year closed three coal plants with a combined generating capacity of more than 4,000 megawatts. The San
Antonio municipal utility, CPS Energy, shut down its 840-megawatt J.T. Deely plant.
The owners of the nearly 700-megawatt Oklaunion coal plant in North Texas plan to shut it down next year. A megawatt can power about 200 Texas homes on a hot summer day.
The coal plant closings are contributing to a tight power market and higher prices this summer. Reserve power margins — the cushion of extra electricity generation to fill in when demand soars on hot summer days — are down to less than 9 percent, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
ERCOT’s reserve margin goal is 13.75 percent.
The plant closings are consistent with a national trend as coal becomes increasingly unable to compete with cheaper and cleaner alternatives, such as natural gas and renewable wind and solar energy. Coal-fired generation peaked a decade ago and has been on a downward trajectory.
In the past four years, 47,000 megawatts of coalfired capacity have been retired in the United States and virtually no new coal generation has come online, according to the Energy Department. The Energy Department expects another 4,100 megawatts of coalfired capacity will retire this year.
Last year, domestic coal consumption dropped to the lowest level since 1978, according to the Energy Department. The power sector accounts for 80 percent of coal consumption.
The Department of Energy forecasts that coal will provide just 25 percent of U.S. electricity generation this summer, down from 28 percent last summer. Natural gas, the nation’s single biggest power source, is expected to supply 40 percent of power generation this summer, up from 39 percent last summer.
Nuclear power plants generate 18 percent of the nation’s electricity this summer, hydroelectric projects 7 percent and wind farms 6 percent.