Coal news and updates

Kentucky Power to stop burning coal in Kentucky this fall

Kentucky Power plans to stop burning coal at its Big Sandy power plant in November, about six months sooner than expected, and get an early start on converting a nearly 300-MW coal unit to natural gas.

"Right now, it looks like we'll take Big Sandy 1 down in November," Ranie Wohnhas, managing director of regulatory and finance for the American Electric Power subsidiary, said in an interview Monday. "It gives us a little more time to get everything done, to be ready for the June [2016] conversion to gas."

The plant's capacity is expected to decrease by about 10 MW to 268 MW once the conversion is completed, according to Wohnhas.

The baseload plant's other coal unit, 800-MW Unit 2, was shut down in May.

Big Sandy has burned lower-sulfur coal from Central Appalachia. When both units were running continuously several years ago, it consumed about 2 million short tons of coal annually.

Idling Unit 1 in just four months means it will not be available this winter to supply power to PJM Interconnection, a regional grid operator based in Pennsylvania. Because it is unknown if the unit was bid into and cleared PJM's incremental capacity auction last year, the impact of Unit 1's unavailability for the winter of 2016-2017 is uncertain, PJM spokeswoman Paula Dupont-Kidd said Tuesday.

"Not knowing specifically if they had committed the capacity, my guess is they didn't for this winter," she said. "But if they did, they either have sold it back or put the offer back out there. We know that was has committed through the capacity auction will be running."

http://www.platts.com