Electricity generation is the process of generating electric power from sources of primary energy. For utilities in the electric power industry, it is the stage prior to its delivery to end users or its storage.
Springfield is the capital of the U.S. state of Illinois and the county seat and largest city of Sangamon County. The city's population was 114,394 at the 2020 census, which makes it the state's seventh most-populous city, the second largest outside of the Chicago metropolitan area, and the largest in central Illinois. Approximately 208,000 residents live in the Springfield metropolitan area.
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.
The British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, operating as BC Hydro, is a Canadian electric utility in the province of British Columbia. It is the main electricity distributor, serving more than 4 million customers in most areas, with the exception of the City of New Westminster, where the city runs its own electrical department and portions of the West Kootenay, Okanagan, the Boundary Country and Similkameen regions, where FortisBC, a subsidiary of Fortis Inc. directly provides electric service to 213,000 customers and supplies municipally owned utilities in the same area. As a provincial Crown corporation, BC Hydro reports to the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, and is regulated by the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC). Its mandate is to generate, purchase, distribute and sell electricity.
The Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board, operating as Manitoba Hydro, is the electric power and natural gas utility in the province of Manitoba, Canada. Founded in 1961, it is a provincial Crown Corporation, governed by the Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board and the Manitoba Hydro Act. Today the company operates 16 interconnected generating stations. It has more than 527,000 electric power customers and more than 263,000 natural gas customers. Since most of the electrical energy is provided by hydroelectric power, the utility has low electricity rates. Stations in Northern Manitoba are connected by a HVDC system, the Nelson River Bipole, to customers in the south. The internal staff are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 998 while the outside workers are members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2034.
District heating is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location through a system of insulated pipes for residential and commercial heating requirements such as space heating and water heating. The heat is often obtained from a cogeneration plant burning fossil fuels or biomass, but heat-only boiler stations, geothermal heating, heat pumps and central solar heating are also used, as well as heat waste from factories and nuclear power electricity generation. District heating plants can provide higher efficiencies and better pollution control than localized boilers. According to some research, district heating with combined heat and power (CHPDH) is the cheapest method of cutting carbon emissions, and has one of the lowest carbon footprints of all fossil generation plants.
The Illinois Terminal Railroad Company, known as the Illinois Traction System until 1937, was a heavy duty interurban electric railroad with extensive passenger and freight business in central and southern Illinois from 1896 to 1956. When Depression era Illinois Traction was in financial distress and had to reorganize, the Illinois Terminal name was adopted to reflect the line's primary money making role as a freight interchange link to major steam railroads at its terminal ends, Peoria, Danville, and St. Louis. Interurban passenger service slowly was reduced, ending in 1956. Freight operation continued but was hobbled by tight street running in some towns requiring very sharp radius turns. In 1956, ITC was absorbed by a consortium of connecting railroads.
Ameren Corporation is an American power company created December 31, 1997, by the merger of St. Louis, Missouri's Union Electric Company and the neighboring Central Illinois Public Service Company of Springfield, Illinois. It is now a holding company for several power companies and energy companies. The company is based in St. Louis, serving 2.4 million electric, and 900,000 natural gas customers across 64,000 square miles in central and eastern Missouri and the southern four-fifths of Illinois by area.
The Union Electric Company of Missouri was an electric power utility that was organized in 1902 and grew to be one of the large U.S. companies listed among the S&P 500. In 1997, its holding company merged with a smaller neighboring utility, Central Illinois Public Service Company through its holding company, CIPSCO Inc., to form Ameren Corporation based in St. Louis, Missouri.
Lake Springfield is a 3,965-acre (16.05 km2) reservoir on the southeast edge of the city of Springfield, Illinois. It is 560 ft (170 m) above sea level. The lake was formed by building Spaulding Dam across Sugar Creek, a tributary of the Sangamon River. It is the largest municipally-owned body of water in Illinois. The lake and the lands adjoining it are all owned by City Water, Light & Power, the municipal utility for the city of Springfield, which operates the Dallman Power Plant at the lake's north end.
PacifiCorp is an electric power company in the western United States.
Edgewater Generating Station is a 380 megawatt (MW) coal power plant located on the south side of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Michigan, whose waters are used to provide cooling. It provides electricity for customers in the northeastern part of Alliant Energy's Wisconsin Power & Light service area and service to several local municipal utilities. In 2009, it was the seventh largest generating station in Wisconsin, with a net summer capacity of 767 MW.
The health and environmental impact of the coal industry includes issues such as land use, waste management, water and air pollution, caused by the coal mining, processing and the use of its products. In addition to atmospheric pollution, coal burning produces hundreds of millions of tons of solid waste products annually, including fly ash, bottom ash, and flue-gas desulfurization sludge, that contain mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic, and other heavy metals. Coal is the largest contributor to the human-made increase of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.
Warrior Run Generating Station, owned by the AES Corporation, is a 205 megawatt cogeneration plant located south of Cumberland, Maryland, at 11600 Mexico Farms Road. In addition to electric power, the plant also produces food-grade carbon dioxide.
Hunter Lake is a proposed 3,070-acre (12.4 km2) reservoir to be created in Illinois, United States, by damming Horse Creek, a tributary of the Sangamon River. If the lake is built, its construction would flood a section of bottomland in southeastern Sangamon County, Illinois near the city of Springfield to an elevation of 571 feet above sea level. The lake is a project of City Water, Light & Power, the local municipal electric utility.
The Seaholm Power Plant is a historic former power station located on the north shore of Lady Bird Lake in Downtown Austin, Texas. Opened in 1951, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. The power plant ceased operation in 1996, and the facility and site were later redeveloped into a mixed-use district.
The V.Y. Dallman Power Station is a coal-fired power plant located in Springfield, Illinois, at the north end of Lake Springfield. It is owned and operated by the city-owned utility City Water, Light & Power. The plant operates on pulverized coal supplied by truck from an Illinois coal mine, and takes its cooling water from Lake Springfield.
