FirstEnergy Solutions says it intends to close its last coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio in 2021-2022, although those decisions could be reversed if the Ohio-based company were to get a federal bailout via the Trump administration, Kallanish Energy reports.
The bankrupt company is closing all of its coal-fired and nuclear power plants in the coming years. It says it needs federal government intervention to make old plants profitable.
FES will close the 2,490-megawatt Bruce Mansfield Power Plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, on June 1, 2021. Units 1-3 would be shut down.
It intends to close the 1,490 MW W.H. Sammis Power Plant at Stratton, Ohio, on June 1, 2022. That affects Units 5-7.
The plan also calls for closing a small diesel unit with 13 MW of power at Sammis and Unit 6 at the company’s Eastlake plant in Eastlake, Ohio. That involves 24 coal-fired MW.
The company late Wednesday notified PJM Interconnection LLC, the regional power transmission organization, of its plans to deactivate or close the four fossil-fueled plants with 4,017 MW of generating capacity.
The company, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., blamed the regional wholesale markets that do not value old coal and nuclear power plants for the closures.
It said the plants are closing “due to a market environment that fails to adequately compensate generators for the resiliency and fuel-security attributes that the plants provide.”
“Our decision to retire the fossil-fueled plants was every bit as difficult as the one we made five months ago to deactivate our nuclear assets,” said Don Moul, president of FES Generation Companies and chief nuclear officer.
“As with nuclear, our fossil-fueled plants face the insurmountable challenge of a market that does not sufficiently value their contribution to the security and flexibility of our power system,” he said, in a statement.
The company last March had announced plans to close its nuclear power plants: two one-reactor plants in Ohio and two reactors at one plant in Pennsylvania.
FirstEnergy has asked the Trump administration to intervene in the markets and order the plants to continue operating despite their high-priced power compared to electricity produced by natural gas-fired plants and wind and solar. The higher costs would be passed on to consumers.
PJM must approve the plant closures and could offer higher rates temporarily, until new transmission lines are built, if needed, to move more power to the region.
The company is asking for an exemption from PJM’s “must offer” rules for fossil and nuclear plants for the 2022-2023 delivery year and beyond.
Under must-offer rules, generating companies in the PJM region are required to make their plants’ capacity available to the grid in regular capacity auctions unless granted an exemption. The auctions are held to secure capacity three years in advance. FES is seeking exemptions from the auctions in 2022-2023 and beyond.
FirstEnergy Solutions said the four plants would continue normal operations. FES had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last March.
