Ohio Utility to Retain 2,535 MW of Coal-Fired Generation

---

Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Investor Owned Utility (IOU) FirstEnergy Corporation (NYSE: FE) (Akron, Ohio) has determined that it is more economical to retain four of their Ohio-based coal-fired generation stations than to sell the stations. The four stations include the 376 megawatt (MW) Ashtabula Station (Ashtabula), the 648 MW Bay Shore Station (Oregon), the 1,262 MW Eastlake Station (Eastlake), and the 249 MW Lake Shore Station (Cleveland). FirstEnergy had originally agreed to sell these stations to NRG Energy (Minneapolis, Minnesota) in November of 2001 for $1.5 billion. When that deal fell through in August of 2002, FirstEnergy sought out other bids until they decided that the actual worth of the plants was greater than what was being offered for them.

The stations began operating between 1948 and 1968. Ashtabula Station has four units: three front-fired Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) boilers (46MW each) and one Asea Brown Boveri/Combustion Engineering (ABB/CE) tangential-fired boiler (256MW). Bay Shore Station has four B&W boilers: three vertical-fired (140MW each) and one front-fired (218MW). Eastlake Station has five units: four tangential-fired ABB/CE boilers (three 123MW and one 208MW) and a B&W opposed-fired boiler (680MW). Lake Shore Station has one ABB/CE tangential-fired boiler (256MW). All of these units have once-through cooling systems and obtain their water from Lake Erie.

FirstEnergy Corporation is a registered holding company. Its seven electric utility operating companies comprise the nation's fourth largest investor-owned electric system, serving 4.3 million customers within 36,100 square miles of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. With $12.2 billion in annual revenues and more than $38 billion in assets, FirstEnergy Corporation operates 16 power plants that produce more than 13,000 MW of electricity. In addition, the company has some 135,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines, and 103 interconnections with 14 regional electric systems.