The Boardman Coal Plant was a coal-fired power plant located in Boardman, Oregon. The facility had a nameplate capacity of 550 megawatts (MWs) and is owned by Portland General Electric. [1] In 2010, the plant was the only remaining coal powered plant in Oregon and received much attention from regional media due to its being the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club calling for its closing. [2] [3]
In 2014, PGE built a new $500 million, 450 MW combined cycle natural gas power plant, named Carty Generating Station, next to the coal plant. [4] [5] [6]
In October 2020, Portland General Electric announced that the coal plant has been permanently closed and was demolished in 2022, ending Oregon's legacy of coal-fired power generation. [7] [8]
The Boardman plant was authorized in 1975, just two years before the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments, which would have required the plant to meet stricter emission standards. [9] When it was operating, the plant accounted for 65% of stationary SO2 emissions, and 7% of CO2 emissions in Oregon. [10] [11]
The Boardman plant was one of PGE's largest power stations, producing 15% of the utility's electricity in 2009. [12]
Portland General Electric's original plan involved operating the plant until 2040; this would require installing over $500 million of pollution control equipment on the plant by 2017 in order to comply with federal and state clean air standards. In early 2010, however, PGE announced that they were considering an alternative plan for the Boardman plant that would close it in 2020. [13] [14] [15]
In April 2010, PGE decided to close the plant in 2020 to save $470 million in upgrades they would have been required to install had they kept the plant operating until 2040. [16] The decision is contingent upon favorable decisions in a lawsuit and possible federal regulations. [16] In December 2010, the state's environmental protection agency approved the plans for the 2020 closing. [17]
PGE started building a second gas-fired generating station at Boardman (the Carty Generating Plant) in 2014. [4]
The plant was being dismantled in 2021, with the structure being demolished in 2022. [18] [8]
Boardman is a city in Morrow County, Oregon, United States on the Columbia River and Interstate 84. As of the 2020 census the population was 3,828. It is currently the largest town in Morrow County, Oregon.
A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid.
GenOn Energy, Inc., based in Houston, Texas, United States, was an energy company that provided electricity to wholesale customers in the United States. The company was one of the largest independent power producers in the nation with more than 14,000 megawatts of power generation capacity across the United States using natural gas, fuel oil and coal. GenOn Energy is headquartered in the Reliant Energy Plaza in Downtown Houston. The company, formerly known as RRI Energy, acquired Mirant on December 3, 2010. The corporate names and logos of both RRI Energy and Mirant were retired.
Portland General Electric (PGE) is a Fortune 1000 public utility based in Portland, Oregon. It distributes electricity to customers in parts of Multnomah, Clackamas, Marion, Yamhill, Washington, and Polk counties - 44% of the inhabitants of Oregon. Founded in 1888 as the Willamette Falls Electric Company, the company has been an independent company for most of its existence, though was briefly owned by the Houston-based Enron Corporation from 1997 until 2006 when Enron divested itself of PGE during its bankruptcy.
Puget Sound Energy (PSE) is an energy utility company based in the U.S. state of Washington that provides electrical power and natural gas to the Puget Sound region. The utility serves electricity to more than 1.1 million customers in Island, King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Pierce, Skagit, Thurston, and Whatcom counties, and provides natural gas to 750,000 customers in King, Kittitas, Lewis, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties. The company's electric and natural gas service area spans 6,000 square miles (16,000 km2).
A fossil fuel power station is a thermal power station which burns a fossil fuel, such as coal or natural gas, to produce electricity. Fossil fuel power stations have machinery to convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, which then operates an electrical generator. The prime mover may be a steam turbine, a gas turbine or, in small plants, a reciprocating gas engine. All plants use the energy extracted from the expansion of a hot gas, either steam or combustion gases. Although different energy conversion methods exist, all thermal power station conversion methods have their efficiency limited by the Carnot efficiency and therefore produce waste heat.
Bayswater Power Station is a bituminous (black) coal-powered thermal power station with four 660 megawatts (890,000 hp) Tokyo Shibaura Electric (Japan) steam driven turbo alternators for a combined capacity of 2,640 megawatts (3,540,000 hp). Commissioned between 1985 and 1986, the station is located 16 kilometres (10 mi) from Muswellbrook, and 28 km (17 mi) from Singleton in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia.
The Keystone Generating Station is a 1.71-gigawatt, coal power plant located on roughly 1,500 acres (610 ha) in Plumcreek Township, southeastern Armstrong County, Pennsylvania near Crooked Creek, just west of Shelocta, Pennsylvania.
Clifty Creek Power Plant is a 1,300-MW coal-fired power station located in Madison, Indiana. Clifty Creek is operated by the Indiana Kentucky Electric Corporation. It is named after Clifty Creek, which enters the Ohio River nearby.
The Robert W. Scherer Power Plant is a coal-fired power plant in Juliette, Georgia, just north of Macon, Georgia, in the United States. The plant has four generating units, each capable of producing 930 megawatts, and is the most powerful coal-fired plant in North America. The plant is named after the former chairman and chief executive officer of Georgia Power.
The Monroe Power Plant is a coal-fired power plant located in Monroe, Michigan, on the western shore of Lake Erie. It is owned by the DTE Energy Electric Company, a subsidiary of DTE Energy. The plant was constructed in the early 1970s and began operating in 1971. The plant has 4 generating units, each with an output of 850 megawatts. With all four generating units operating, the plant's total output is 3,300 megawatts. This makes it the eleventh largest electric plant in the United States.
NW Natural, formerly Northwest Natural Gas Company, is an American publicly traded utility headquartered in Portland, Oregon, United States. Primarily a natural gas distributor, the company services residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Western Oregon and Southwest Washington in the Pacific Northwest. NW Natural also owns water utilities. Founded in 1859, the company has approximately 680,000 customers and revenues of nearly one billion in US dollars annually.
Coal generated about 19.5% of the electricity at utility-scale facilities in the United States in 2022, down from 42% in 2014. In 2021, coal supplied 9.5 quadrillion British thermal units (2,800 TWh) of primary energy to electric power plants, which made up 90% of coal's contribution to U.S. energy supply. Utilities buy more than 90% of the coal consumed in the United States. There were over 200 coal powered units across the United States in 2022. Coal plants have been closing since the 2010s due to cheaper and cleaner natural gas and renewables. But environmentalists say that political action is needed to close them faster, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the United States to better limit climate change.
Biglow Canyon Wind Farm is an electricity generating wind farm facility in Sherman County, Oregon, United States. It is owned by Portland, Oregon-based Portland General Electric and began operations in 2007. With the completion of phase 3 of the project it has a generating capacity of 450 megawatts. It is located roughly five miles (8 km) northeast of Wasco, Oregon, and about ten miles (16 km) southeast of Rufus, Oregon. Biglow Canyon Wind Farm covers 25,000 acres (10,000 ha) in the Columbia River Gorge.
The Chalk Point Generating Station is an electricity-generating plant, comprising oil and natural gas fired units, owned by NRG Energy, located near the town of Eagle Harbor, Maryland, United States, on the Patuxent River.
The Miami Fort Generating Station is a dual-fuel power generating facility. It is a major coal-fired electrical power station, supplemented with a small oil-fired facility. Miami Fort is located in Miami Township, Hamilton County, immediately east of the tripoint of Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. Miami Fort Station is named for the nearby Miami Fort.
The U.S. state of Oregon is the third largest renewable energy producing state in the United States. Hydroelectric power dominates the power market in Oregon, providing nearly two-thirds of the electricity generated in the state, although it accounts for only 38.91% of the total percentage consumed when electricity imported from other states is accounted for. Natural gas is the second largest source of energy consumption in Oregon, that being one third of Oregon's net power generation. This is mostly due to recent reserves of natural gas being found in Coos Bay, OR. As well as persistent extraction from the Mist Field in northwest Oregon, near Astoria.The energy used in Oregon comes mainly from hydroelectric power at 38.91%, coal at 26.47%, natural gas at 21.50%, and wind at 7.01%.
Prairie State Energy Campus is a 1,600 megawatt base load, coal-fired, electrical power station and coal mine near Marissa, Illinois southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. Prairie State Energy Campus (PSEC) features low levels of regulated emissions compared to other coal-fired power stations, capturing sulfur from high-sulfur coal mined nearby instead of transporting low-sulfur coal from elsewhere.
The Four Corners Generating Station is a 1,540 megawatt coal-fired power plant located near Fruitland, New Mexico, on property located on the Navajo Nation that is leased from the Navajo Nation government.
The Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility Boardman, informally known as the Boardman Bombing Range, is a military installation south of Boardman, Oregon in the United States. It is used by NAS Whidbey Island as their principal training grounds for testing EA-18G Growler aircraft and for drone testing. It is located about 70 miles (110 km) south of the Yakima Training Center, which is used by Joint Base Lewis-McChord for training exercises and about 15 miles (24 km) west of the now closed Umatilla Chemical Depot.
Portland General Electric has started building a natural gas-fired power plant in Boardman. The plant is next to a coal-fired power plant that is slated to close or be converted to a different fuel source by 2020.
Construction has come to a halt at Portland General Electric's Carty Generating Station near Boardman as the project contractor teeters on the brink of bankruptcy. Workers were turned away Monday at the Carty site next to the Boardman Coal Plant on Tower Road, leaving the 440-megwatt natural gas-fired power plant in a temporary state of limbo. ... The plant could cost up to $514 million when all is said and done.
The Carty Generating Station is a 450 megawatt, combined-cycle natural gas-fueled electric generating power plant, and includes a not-yet-constructed 50 megawatt solar PV electric power generating unit on 315 acres (0.49 sq. miles). The facility is located within an overall site boundary of approximately 4,997 acres.