POWER October 2013 - 38

TOP PLANTS
Prairie State Energy Campus,
Washington County, Illinois
Owner/operator: Prairie State Generating Co., LLC
Courtesy: Prairie State Generating Co., LLC
The 1,600-MW Prairie State Energy Campus uses the latest coal technology to burn
Illinois coal from the Lively Grove mine, located adjacent to the plant. In planning
since 2001, the second unit of the two-unit, $4.93 billion plant entered commercial
service in November 2012, thus completing the largest coal-fired plant built in the
U.S. in 30 years.
Dr. Robert Peltier, PE
T
he Prairie State Energy Campus
(PSEC) is likely the last of the multiunit
coal-fired power plants that will
be built in the U.S. in the foreseeable future.
The most recently commissioned coal plants
(SWEPCO's 600-MW John W. Turk, Jr. and
Duke Energy's 825-MW Cliffside Unit 6) are
single-unit plants with no firm plans for future
expansion. The last two-unit coal-fired
plants completed as a single project were
Luminant's Oak Grove power plant (2 x 800
MW) and We Energies' Elm Road plant (2
x 615), both completed in 2010, but that's
where the similarity ends.
Peabody Energy Corp., the world's largest
private-sector coal company, originally conceived
the development plan for PSEC in the
early 2000s. The plan called for strategically
locating a power plant adjacent to its Illinois
Basin coal reserves as a means to ensure future
fuel supplies and to minimize the impact
on rates caused by market price fluctuations
of delivered coal, including transportation.
38
Electricity customers benefit from steady, affordable
rates for decades to come because
the project also secured more than 30 years
of coal reserves located adjacent to PSEC.
Ninety-five percent of PSEC's ownership
group are public power agencies and community-owned
electric utilities, spread over
eight states. The Prairie State Energy Campus
owners are not-for-profit, public power
entities including American Municipal Power
(23.36%), Illinois Municipal Electric Agency
(15.17%), Indiana Municipal Power Agency
(12.64%), Kentucky Municipal Power Agency
(7.82%), Missouri Joint Municipal Electric
Utility Commission (12.33%), Northern
Illinois Municipal Power Agency (7.60%),
Prairie State Power Inc. (8.22%), Southern
Illinois Power Cooperative (7.90%), and
Peabody Energy (5.06%) through its Lively
Grove Energy subsidiary. Each member of
the ownership group receives electricity from
the plant proportional to its ownership percentage
and pays a like percentage of the
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plant's ownership and operating costs.
Central Location
PSEC is located on a 1,200-acre site that
includes both Prairie State's Lively Grove
underground mine and the power plant. The
mine-mouth plant, located about 50 miles
southeast of St. Louis, consumes ~7 million
tons per year of Illinois Basin coal.
Construction of the $4.93 billion plant began
in May 2007 with site preparation following
several years of lawsuits and legal
challenges related to the plant's air permit
that were finally resolved in favor of PSEC.
Purchase contracts for the steam generators,
steam turbines, and air quality control equipment
were concluded in June-July 2007. The
underground coal mine was operational in
2010. Unit 1 went online on June 6, 2012,
followed by Unit 2 on Nov. 3, 2012.
PSEC consists of two supercritical coalfired
steam generators manufactured by The
Babcock & Wilcox Co. Each steam generaPOWER
| October 2013
http://www.powermag.com
POWER October 2013

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