[ProtectOurFreedom]

Petersburg Generating Station is a major coal-fired power plant in Indiana, rated at 2.146-GW nameplate capacity. Units 1, 2, and 3, rated at 281, 523, and 671 MW, were put into operation in 1967, 1969, and 1977 respectively. Unit 4, rated at 671 MWe, was put into operation in 1986.

---

The stupidity is absolutely breathtaking. They are shutting down 2,100 MW of nameplate generating capacity that probably ran with an average capacity factor of 65%.

The battery storage system at the same power plant site is rated at 800 MW-h. If the batteries spend 12 hours a day charging and 12 hours a day discharging, and can discharge 80% of their full charge, then the batteries can deliver a constant 53 MW over those 12 hours. A lot of good that does replacing 2,100 MW of GENERATION.

They will need FORTY of these battery storage systems to deliver the same power that the ONE Petersburg coal-fired power plant could deliver at any hour of any day throughout the entire year.

Yet the execs quoted in the article are gloating over being the first coal-free utility in Indiana!

Note, too, that the article says people DO NOT want these things built in their backyards.

“Reuse of these interconnections is critical to driving down the cost of replacement generation,” says Justin Tomljanovic, a VP of corporate development at Xcel Energy

Justin, you jerk! If you really want to keep power prices low, you'd keep the EXISTING coal generating fleet of plants running. Note that he is saying they want to drive down the cost of the REPLACEMENT generation fleet. If they weren't kissing ass to the GD meddling government, they wouldn't have to be building replacement generation in the first place.

All you Michiganers, please tell us how things are going for you there.

[bray]

Communists are really good at solving imaginary problems.

[Tell It Right]

Two of those coal units will be switched out to cleaner-burning natural gas

It's hard to keep up. Are the Dims now saying natural gas is a good thing? They're changing their minds on pushing or blocking natural gas about as much as they've done in my lifetime regarding nuclear.

[qaz123]

Probably bad to say, but I hope the people being serviced in that area, absolutely freeze this winter. I want burst pipes and all sorts of shenanigans.

I don’t want anyone to die, but a high level of discomfort is A-OK with me.

Has anyone in that region done any research on how all of that “green nonsense” worked out for Texas a while back?

[Bonemaker]

Will just be converting them back again eventually.

[Bonemaker]

“It is a company strategy that we think enables us to hit our carbon goals and our states’ carbon goals cost effectively.”

[vpintheak]

We’ve got plenty of idiot a-hole leftists up here in Alaska too. The utility board of directors is shutting down our largest coal plant with hundreds of millions in debt on it yet, to get wind power and battery storage.
As they cause the rates to skyrocket, they will pat themselves on the back thinking they’ve saved the planet. Fools. Utters fools.

[GrumpyOldGuy]

What a crock. Total BS.

[AZJeep]

Indiana has been blessed with large coal deposits!
Coal is actually the biggest energy resource, especially for the USA.
US has the largest, by far, known reserves of coal in the world! No wonder, coal is being targeted the most!

[GenXPolymath]

A modern nuclear power reactor can output steam that is compatible with those existing coal fueled turbines. By modern I mean sodium cooled fast reactor such as the Chinese and Russians both have active versions of.

Jimmy Carter that traitor shut down the integrated fast reactor program for proliferation BS reasons. Well Jimmy Iran,NKorea,China,India,Pakistan all got nukes without ever using IFR technology so your argument was a false flag.

We have the technology today to build in a factory assembly line style IFR sized fast reactors that can directly repower existing coal plants like this one with 90% capacity factors that nukes typically have. The Greens and the NRC refuse to licence small modular factory built reactors. They are slow walking the sodium fast reactor in Wyoming also being built on a former coal site.

Fast reactors burn the other 96% of spent fuel leaving only fission products as wastes that need to be turned to glass and stored for only a few hundred years vs a million for whole spent fuel rods. The other benefit is FR can breed more fuel than they burn extending the fuel reserves for tens of thousands of years.

Nuclear power is the only power source with the magnitude of fuel and capacity factors to run a first world civilization on. Wind and solar do not have the multiple quadrillion BTU per year capacity to ever run civilization on.

Full disclosure the solar panels on my roof cuts my power bills to tens of dollars a month or in summer time negative bills. For individual use on a larger home’s roof footprint they make sense from a grid independence / cost savings view point.

Utility scale solar is and always will be a boondoggle. Same for wind power the capacity factors are simply too low to ever run modern civilization on. There will likely never be low enough cost battery storage to compare on a LCOE basis to nuclear power on a $ per megawatt on demand basis. Don’t fall for the avoidance cost price or curtailment prices. Power needs to be on demand basis what’s the cost right now this instant at peak power usage? When it’s dark,cold and no wind what’s the price of power at that second.

[gitmo]

That’s like replacing a Ferrari with an oxcart. And the ox is arthritic.