Mill Creek Generating Station | |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Location | Louisville, Kentucky |
Coordinates | 38°03′N85°55′W / 38.05°N 85.91°W |
Commission date | 1972 |
Owner | Louisville Gas & Electric |
Thermal power station | |
Primary fuel | Bituminous coal |
Cooling source | Ohio River |
Power generation | |
Units operational | 4 |
Nameplate capacity | 1,717 MW |
The Mill Creek Generating Station is a coal-fired power plant owned and operated by Louisville Gas & Electric in the Kosmosdale neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. It is located on 544 acres in southwest Louisville, about 20 miles from downtown.
Construction on the plant began in 1968 to meet growing energy demand in the Louisville area, according to the utility. [1] Unit 1 went into service by 1972, unit 2 by 1974, unit 3 by 1978, and unit 4 in 1982.
Mill Creek Generating Station is LG&E's largest coal-fired power plant. It consumes about 4.8 million tons of fuel annually.
In 2024, the utility began construction on a 640-megawatt natural gas combined-cycle generating unit at the plant, expected to begin operations in 2027. [2]
Trimble County is a county located in the north central part of the U.S. state of Kentucky. Its county seat is Bedford. The county was founded in 1837 and is named for Robert Trimble. Trimble is no longer a prohibition or dry county. Trimble County is part of the Louisville/Jefferson County, KY–IN Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Puget Sound Energy, Inc. (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 1.2 million customers in Island, King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Pierce, Skagit, Thurston, and Whatcom counties, and provides natural gas to 877,000 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).
Duke Energy Corporation is an American electric power and natural gas holding company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company ranked as the 141st largest company in the United States in 2024 – its highest-ever placement on the Fortune 500 list.
Homer City Generating Station is a decommissioned 2-GW coal-burning power station near Homer City, in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, USA. It is owned by hedge funds and private equity firms and is operated by NRG Energy. Units 1 and 2, rated at 660 MWe, began operation in 1969. Unit 3, rated at 692 MWe nameplate capacity, was launched in 1977. It employed about 124 people.
The William H. Zimmer Power Station, located near Moscow, Ohio, was a 1.35-gigawatt coal power plant. Planned by Cincinnati Gas and Electric (CG&E), with Columbus & Southern Ohio Electric and Dayton Power & Light (DP&L) as its partners, it was originally intended to be a nuclear power plant. Although once estimated to be 97% complete, poor construction and quality assurance (QA) led to the plant being converted to coal-fired generation. The plant began operations in 1991. Vistra Corp. acquired ownership in 2018 and operated the plant until its closure on May 31, 2022.
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.
Kentucky Utilities (KU) is based in Lexington, Kentucky, and provides electricity to 77 counties in Kentucky. KU also serves five counties in Virginia under the name Old Dominion Power. It is owned by LG&E and KU Energy, LLC, which, in turn, is owned by PPL Corporation.
Louisville Gas & Electric (LG&E) is a utilities company based in Louisville, Kentucky. A subsidiary of PPL Corporation through the LG&E and KU Energy subsidiary, LG&E serves over 429,000 electric and over 333,000 natural gas customers, covers an area of 700 square miles (1800 km2), and has a total regulated electric generation capacity of 2,760 megawatts.
The Acid Rain Program is a market-based initiative taken by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in an effort to reduce overall atmospheric levels of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which cause acid rain. The program is an implementation of emissions trading that primarily targets coal-burning power plants, allowing them to buy and sell emission permits according to individual needs and costs. In 2011, the trading program that existed since 1995 was supplemented by four separate trading programs under the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). On August 21, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued its Opinion and Order in the appeal of the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) for two independent legal reasons. The stay on CSAPR was lifted in October 2014, allowing implementation of the law and its trading programs to begin.
Kingston Fossil Plant, commonly known as Kingston Steam Plant, is a 1.4-gigawatt coal-fired power plant located in Roane County, just outside Kingston, Tennessee, on the shore of Watts Bar Lake. It is operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The plant is known for the Kingston Fossil Plant fly ash spill which occurred in December 2008.
Coal generated about 19.5% of the electricity at utility-scale facilities in the United States in 2022, down from 38.6% in 2014 and 51% in 2001. 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 2024. Coal plants have been closing since the 2010s due to cheaper and cleaner natural gas and renewables. Due to measures such as scrubbers air pollution from the plants kills far fewer people nowadays, but deaths in 2020 from PM25 have been estimated at 1600. Environmentalists say that political action is needed to close them faster, to also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the United States and better limit climate change.
Centralia Big Hanaford power plant is a coal-fired power plant supplemented with natural-gas-fired units. It is located east of Centralia, Washington, United States in Lewis County. It is the only commercial coal-fired power plant in the State of Washington.
The Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (OVEC) is a company jointly owned by several parent electrical utilities. It is headquartered in Piketon, Ohio. OVEC and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Indiana-Kentucky Electrical Corporation (IKEC), own and operate two coal-fired electrical generating plants. They are the Kyger Creek Power Plant, located near Gallipolis, Ohio, and the Clifty Creek Power Plant near Madison, Indiana.
Coal was discovered in Kentucky in 1750. Since the first commercial coal mine opened in 1820 coal has gained both economic importance and controversy regarding its environmental consequences. As of 2010 there were 442 operating coal mines in the state, and as of 2017 there were fewer than 4,000 underground coalminers.
The E. W. Brown Generating Station is a quad coal-fired power plant, natural gas power plant, solar power plant, and hydro electric plant owned and operated by Kentucky Utilities near Harrodsburg in Mercer County, Kentucky.
The Cane Run Generating Station is a 640 megawatt (MW), natural gas power plant owned and operated by Louisville Gas and Electric (LG&E). It is 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Downtown Louisville, Kentucky, in its Pleasure Ridge Park neighborhood. It was formerly a coal power plant until 2015.
Ohio Falls Station is a hydroelectric power station owned by Louisville Gas & Electric (LG&E) and Kentucky Utilities (KU) which is located three miles west of Downtown Louisville, Kentucky. The generating station is located on Shippingport Island at the site of the McAlpine Dam and locks along the Ohio River in Kentucky. The plant was built in 1923 by Byllesby Engineering and Management Corporation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The plant featured eight 10.4 MW units operating at roughly 13,500 hp per unit. Each unit was composed of Allis-Chalmers turbines and General Electric generators. The plant is located inside the Ohio Natural Wildlife Conservation Area and is considered a large impoundment hydro power plant. The station was built after a canal and dam within the Ohio river in an attempt to allow boats to navigate the 8 ft vertical drop among the falls that spanned 2 miles wide. Production of the canal and dam began in 1825. It was not until a repair on the dam was needed that Louisville engineers had the idea of building a hydroelectric station to harvest the power of the falls.