Duke Energy's Controversial Wabash River Power Station Units Might Return as Peakers

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Duke Energy Indiana, a subsidiary of Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) (Charlotte, North Carolina), said Friday that it is currently performing maintenance at the Wabash River Power Station in West Terre Haute, Indiana, to two Foster Wheeler (NASDAQ:FWLT) (Clinton, New Jersey) front-fired boilers and one Riley Stoker front-fired boiler, as well as environmental systems on units 2, 3 and 5, that total approximately 360.8 megawatts of coal-fired generation.

In late 2008, the company started reducing the operation and generation of the three units because of legal issues facing them in court brought by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has requested data on 14 Indiana power plant ash ponds, in addition to filing suit against Duke for greenhouse gas releases. In turn, Duke stopped operating the units earlier this year as part of a mandate from the EPA that will only allow them to operate 30% annually.

Industrial Info has been informed that the units might be brought back online sometime in the first part of June 2009 to meet the summer load. This would technically convert the one-time base-load units to peaking units under a reliability must-run (RMR) situation. Under this specific operation type, the units could operate 90 days straight under full generation capacity. RMRs are necessary during certain operating conditions in order to maintain the stability and security of power systems in a competitive environment. Absence of RMR units may result in unsecure operation of a system and this could have catastrophic consequences to the local electrical grid, such as excessive strain, possible rolling brownouts and localized blackouts. Wabash River has the highest carbon dioxide emissions of any coal-fired power plant in the country. On the flip side, it has some of the lowest sulfur-dioxide and nitrogen-oxide levels of any coal-fired plant in the country.

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