Arkansas Blog

I propose that we change the name of the Fulton-McNab plant to the Dead Horse Plant so you guys could keep beating it

ARK. BLOG: You think it's dead?

Yea, everybody will be all for your cause until the lights go out and it starts getting cold or hot depending on the season. Then they have a whole different perspective and all of a sudden they don't support you they want to string you up for opposing more power.

Why on earth can't wind and solar power be added instead of another coal-fired plant? The supply of energy is free, it's just the start-up costs and maintenance costs.

No mountaintop removal needed, no shipping costs, no pollution costs. What could be wrong with that.

I would like folks who are opposed to coal plants to walk a mile in the shoes of folks at FERC or NERC who study the economics of how the cost of electricity production makes a difference in our economy. Arkansas is not immune. Coal is one of the cheapest forms of generation for the 'base load'. Base load generation (coal, nuclear, geothermal) is always available given the fuel. Because of it's nature, base load generation runs as close to non-stop as possible. The western side of Arkansas only has one base load plant, the rest are in north Louisiana, Northeast Texas, and eastern Oklahoma and serve Arkansas via high voltage transmission lines. Without the AEP plant in Fulton, the price of power for AEP (Swepco customers in particular) will climb because the cheap coal power will have to be substituted for with more expensive natural gas. At $15 a mmBtu and a natural gas plant with a 7.5 heat rate, you have roughly $120 MW/hr power. Compare that to the Fulton plants estimated cost of $45 MW/hr. You are condeming Swepco customers to an electric bill nearly 1.5-3 times greater than the one they have today.
Now throw in the fact that this new plant is a supercritical pulverized coal plant, and you have one of the cleanest coal plants in the country. As technology for scrubbing mercury and CO2 become more cost effective, they can be added not only to the Fulton plant, but to all coal plants in the US. The problem is, if this process is rushed, we will all see huge increases in our electric bills.
Just remember, it's easy to say "Coal is Bad", but the big problem is that you will start to write bigger checks to the electric utility because they will be forced to pass on their higher production costs to the consumer. For that reason, Coal is Good!
Now, wind and solar are random in the amount of power they make. A reliable electric grid requires stable power feeding it. There are limitations as to how much wind our grid can handle, and will require natural gas or other 'Peaking' plants to help smooth out the surges caused by massive wind and solar farms. This all costs money, and costs more than coal. You have wind farms that can put out power for $90 MW/hr. That is a vast improvement in the last 5 years, and will continue to improve, but the amount of total generation for wind/solar is still small and requires billions of dollars of investment. Studies still show for every dollar spent in a coal plant today, you still end up with cheaper power once that plant is in production. Someday that may change, but we are still a few years from that being an economic reality.
i hate paying entergy for covering production costs in MS, LA, and TX. It's that FERC rider on your entergy bill. If more places used coal and nuclear, maybe entergy AR customers would not have to subsidize the rest of the entergy system. Coal is good, when looked at in perspective.