Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority voted Thursday morning to close the last remaining coal-fired generating unit at the federal utility's Paradise Fossil Plant in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, despite opposition from President Trump, Gov. Matt Bevin, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Kentucky's other senator, Rand Paul.
"Residents had warned that closing Unit 3 at the plant, which employs 131 people, would hurt the local economy and force people to move away for work, and Trump sent a tweet earlier this week urging TVA to consider all factors before voting to close viable power plants like Unit 3 at Paradise," Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "However, an analysis by the utility said the aging Unit 3 had deteriorated, had a relatively high rate of unplanned shutdowns, and would require significant costs for mechanical and environmental upgrades to keep it running."
TVA President Bill Johnson told the board that the utility could save more than $1 billion by closing the Paradise unit and the Bull Run Fossil Plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn. “This decision is about economics. It’s about keeping rates as low as possible,” he said.
Estep notes that the three-unit Paradise plant "was once the largest coal-fired facility of its kind in the world," and TVA replaced two of its coal units with a new plant fired by natural gas, the abundance and cheapness of which recently made it the top fuel for generating electricity in the U.S. (The hamlet of Paradise, which no longer exists, was made famous in 1971 by John Prine's eponymous anti-strip mining song.)
from The Rural Blog http://bit.ly/2BD4MNB TVA to close last coal unit at Paradise, despite oppositon - Entrepreneur Generations
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