Texas Looking to Add 7,000-10,000 Megawatts of Solid Fuel Baseload Generation

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). With the high cost of natural gas, future baseload generation in Texas, has strong indications that it will lean towards the utilization of local coal (lignite) and petroleum coke. With the incorporation of new technologies coal is able to generate energy with emissions close to those of natural gas at lower operational costs.

TXU Corporation (NYSE:TXU) (Dallas, Texas) is heading this development of new solid fuel generation with possible additions at two lignite coal-fired power stations. This includes the Sandow Power Station 500-megawatt (MW) circulating fluidized-bed boiler (CFB) unit #5 at Rockdale, Texas, and Martin Lake Power Station 750 MW unit #4 near Tatum, Texas. TXU is also developing a grassroot 1,720 MW station near Franklin and announced they are looking at possibly investing an additional 4,000 MW in addition to the aforementioned projects.

Click on the image at right to view a listing of the coal-fired projects in Texas.

Two community-owned utilities are also developing coal-fired units. San Antonio City Public Service will install a pulverized coal (PC) 750 MW unit at their Spruce power station and South Electric Cooperative, Incorporated is looking at adding a 550 MW unit or build a grassroot power station.

Twin Oaks Power LP, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy (NYSE:SRE) (San Diego, California), is studying increasing the Twin Oaks power station in Bremond by adding two 300 MW units with CFB boilers.

AEP-Southwestern Electric Power Company (AEP-SWEPCO) (Shreveport, Louisiana), a subsidiary of American Electric Power, is considering a self-build option for a 650 MW unit that will be operational by June 2011. AEP is also considering constructing a grassroot site, or renovate an existing site, Henry W. Pirkey power station in Hallsville, and utilizing PC, CFB or Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology.

Sandy Creek Energy Associates, a subsidiary of LS Power Development LLC (East Brunswick, New Jersey), is studying a grassroot 800 MW station utilizing PC technology in one or two of the new units.

Tenaska, Incorporated (Omaha, Nebraska), a private energy producer with plants already in Texas, has a 750 MW PC unit on the back burner waiting for better economics.

The State of Texas has put together a taskforce called FutureGen Texas utilizing the Railroad Commission of Texas and the Bureau of Economic Geology to develop plans to compete with other states for the Department of Energy’s FutureGen Project to produce power with gasification process that will produce a hydrogen feedstock plus have sulfur recovery and sequester carbon oxides.

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