POWER June 2015 - 47

GENERATION TRANSITIONS
2. Newest IGCC plant. The Edwardsport integrated coal gasification combined cycle
plant in Knox County, Indiana, has struggled to live up to performance expectations, which Duke
Energy has said is a result of the complexity and relative newness of the technology. Courtesy:
Duke Energy
3. Deemed not worth saving. Multiple
problems at the Crystal River nuclear
plant led to its closure in 2009 and retirement
in 2013. Courtesy: Duke Energy
Indiana regulators now face the issue of
development. In addition, Good was responsible
for the information technology and supply
chain functions. "
Good has had a rocky tenure so far, as
the giant utility has faced large environmental
and legal challenges related to coal ash
storage pond leaks at some of its coal-fired
power plants. A major spill into the Dan
River in early 2014 highlighted the problem.
Duke later admitted to leakages into surface
waters from 14 coal plants, although the
company says it isn't sure they are all from
coal ash ponds.
At the end of March, federal prosecutors
filed multiple criminal charges against Duke
for the coal ash pond leaks. The nine misdemeanor
counts, the Associated Press reported,
cover leaks at five plants. Duke said it has
already negotiated a plea bargain that will let
the company pay $102 million in fines. It has
set aside the money to cover the penalties.
Good will take a $600,000 hit on her annual
paycheck. That's a pinprick against her annual
compensation package of $8.3 million,
according to the Charlotte Business Journal.
(Duke did not respond to multiple requests
for comment for this article.)
North Carolina has also assessed Duke
a $25 million fine for its coal ash handling
practices at the company's Sutton plant near
Wilmington, N.C., the largest fine the state's
environmental regulators have ever levied.
Coal Proves Challenging
Duke, along with other generating utilities,
is moving away from coal and toward gas in
its regulated service territory-and not just
June 2015 | POWER
because of coal ash issues. CEO Good commented
in the company's 2014 annual report,
" Duke Energy has five new, cleaner-burning
natural gas-fired power plants in North Carolina,
replacing seven coal plants. This helps
us meet new environmental standards and
produce power more efficiently. "
Since 2011, says Duke, the company has
closed 10 coal-fired generating plants, including
seven of 14 in North Carolina (Figure
1). Says Duke's Danny Wimberly, in charge
of closing the utility's old and outdated coalfired
units, " This is an important step for the
company as it shifts to more modern technology,
but at the same time, it's bittersweet
to see the smokestacks and buildings of our
legacy plants come crashing down. "
Duke is also struggling with its 618-MW
Edwardsport integrated coal gasification,
combined cycle (IGCC) generating plant in
Indiana (Figure 2). Duke Energy has long
touted the IGCC plant as the future of coalfired
generation. Many in the electric utility
industry have been boosting coal gasification
and combined cycle generation for at
least three decades, with little to show for
the hyperbole.
Edwardsport, which went into service in
mid-2013, has had serious teething problems,
as POWER noted in a July 2014 article, " Does
IGCC Have a Future? " As that article noted,
" It reached 60% capacity in August, only to
suffer mechanical failures this past winter
that reduced output to a trickle in January
and February. " The project also experienced
tumultuous cost overruns, which totaled $1.5
billion when the plant went online.
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whether to allow Duke to recover the costs
of Edwardsport from the state's electricity
customers. A coalition of environmental
and consumer advocacy groups in Indiana is
challenging Duke at the Indiana Regulatory
Utility Commission, which began hearing
the case in early February. They argue that
" over the period from June 2013 to March
2014, the plant's costs were 876% higher
than if the power had been purchased on the
market. Duke Indiana operates in the MISO
marketplace where the cost of market purchases
over the same period was $33.5 per
MWh while Edwardsport came in at a whopping
$327.03/MWh. "
Tough Love for Nuclear Plants
Duke has also experienced some nuclear
wobbles in the past couple of years, mostly
because of steps Progress Energy took
before Duke acquired the rival utility in
2011. In 2009, Progress discovered significant
structural problems with the containment
at the Crystal River plant (Figure
3), which went into service in 1977. After
years of study and discovery of additional
problems, in early 2013, Duke announced
it would retire the 860-MW plant on the
Florida Gulf Coast near Tampa and decommission
the Babcock & Wilcox pressurized
water reactor. The site also houses four
large coal-fired units.
Duke is asking Florida legislators for
permission to borrow $1.4 billion to pay
off Crystal River's poor performance. The
unit cost $447 million to build, but Duke
says it still hasn't finished paying off the
construction of the plant and its operations
through 2009.
Six months after the decision to close
Crystal River, Duke pulled the plug on Progress's
planned Levy County nuclear station,
designed at the height of the failed " nuclear
renaissance. " The plant would have housed
two 1,000-MW Westinghouse AP1000 advanced
pressurized water reactors.
47

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POWER June 2015

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