Trimble County power station
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Trimble County power station is an operating power station of at least 2594-megawatts (MW) in Bedford, Trimble, Kentucky, United States.
Location
Table 1: Project-level location details
| Plant name | Location | Coordinates (WGS 84) |
|---|---|---|
| Trimble County power station | Bedford, Trimble, Kentucky, United States | 38.5847, -85.4117 (exact)[1] |
The map below shows the exact location of the power station.
Unit-level coordinates (WGS 84):
- 10, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9: 38.5847, -85.4117
- Unit 1: 38.5845833, -85.4136722
- Unit 2: 38.584722, -85.411944
Project Details
Table 2: Unit-level details
| Unit name | Status | Fuel(s) | Capacity (MW) | Technology | CHP | Start year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | Operating[1] | fossil gas: natural gas[1] | 199[1] | gas turbine[1] | no[1] | 2004[1] |
| 5 | Operating[1] | fossil gas: natural gas[1] | 199[1] | gas turbine[1] | no[1] | 2002[1] |
| 6 | Operating[1] | fossil gas: natural gas[1] | 199[1] | gas turbine[1] | no[1] | 2002[1] |
| 7 | Operating[1] | fossil gas: natural gas[1] | 199[1] | gas turbine[1] | no[1] | 2004[1] |
| 8 | Operating[1] | fossil gas: natural gas[1] | 199[1] | gas turbine[1] | no[1] | 2004[1] |
| 9 | Operating[1] | fossil gas: natural gas[1] | 199[1] | gas turbine[1] | no[1] | 2004[1] |
| Unit 1 | Operating | coal: bituminous | 566 | subcritical | – | 1990 |
| Unit 2 | Operating | coal: bituminous | 834 | supercritical | – | 2011 |
CHP is an abbreviation for Combined Heat and Power. It is a technology that produces electricity and thermal energy at high efficiencies. Coal units track this information in the Captive Use section when known.
Table 3: Unit-level ownership and operator details
| Unit name | Owner | Parent |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | Kentucky Utilities Co [63%]; Louisville Gas & Electric Co [37%][2][2] | PPL Corp [100.0%] |
| 5 | Louisville Gas & Electric Co [29%]; Kentucky Utilities Co [71%][2][2] | PPL Corp [100.0%] |
| 6 | Louisville Gas & Electric Co [29%]; Kentucky Utilities Co [71%][2][2] | PPL Corp [100.0%] |
| 7 | Kentucky Utilities Co [63%]; Louisville Gas & Electric Co [37%][2][2] | PPL Corp [100.0%] |
| 8 | Kentucky Utilities Co [63%]; Louisville Gas & Electric Co [37%][2][2] | PPL Corp [100.0%] |
| 9 | Kentucky Utilities Co [63%]; Louisville Gas & Electric Co [37%][2][2] | PPL Corp [100.0%] |
| Unit 1 | Indiana Municipal Power Agency [12%]; Illinois Municipal Elec Agency [12%]; Louisville Gas & Electric Co [75%] | PPL Corp [75.0%]; Indiana Municipal Power Agency [12.9%]; Illinois Municipal Elec Agency [12.1%] |
| Unit 2 | Indiana Municipal Power Agency [12%]; Louisville Gas & Electric Co [14%]; Illinois Municipal Elec Agency [12%]; Kentucky Utilities Co [60%] | PPL Corp [75.0%]; Indiana Municipal Power Agency [12.9%]; Illinois Municipal Elec Agency [12.1%] |
Power station
The plant’s coal generating units consist of TC1 with a net rated capacity of 514 megawatts, and TC2 with a net rated capacity of 760 megawatts. TC1 entered operation in December 1990, and TC2 in January 2011.[3]
Background on Unit 2
Trimble County power station 2 began operating in January 2011.
Louisville Gas and Electric (LG&E), a wholly-owned subsidiary of E.ON US proposed to build a 750 megawatt (MW) supercritical pulverized coal plant at Trimble County power station, which already has a 514 MW coal fired plant (Unit 1) in operation.[4]
The new plant (Unit 2) would burn Illinois Basin high sulfur bituminous coal and would be built by Bechtel Power. It received a $125 million tax credit from the federal government’s 2005 EPACT Qualifying Advanced Coal Program. In Sept. 2007, the Sierra Club reported that the Trimble air permit had gone back to the draft stage. [5]
In Fall 2008, the Federal EPA supported the legal challenge that Kentucky violated the Clean Air Act in issuing state permits to the Trimble coal plant and now state officials in Kentucky must “correct” the permit to be more restrictive.[6]
In January 2009, the developer resubmitted an air permit application, according to Energy Justice Network.[7]
The permit was sent by the U.S. EPA to the Kentucky Division for Air Quality for analysis of Best Achievable Control Technologies (BACT) determination during startup and shutdown of equipment and for clarification of the applicability of regulation under Kentucky's Air Toxics regulations.[8]
On January 28, 2010, the Kentucky Division for Air Quality issued a final air permit for the facility, and on April 1, 2010, the Kentucky Division of Water issued a final wastewater discharge permit for the power station. The permits were challenged by the Sierra Club, but the power station entered operation in 2011.[9]
2022 winter blackouts
In January 2023, the CEO of Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU) blamed blackouts on December 23, 2022, on a frozen gas pipeline. The blackouts affected 35,000 customers and the utility shed 317 MW in load to stabilize the system. The CEO’s comments were cited by Republican legislators the following month before they adopted Senate Bill 4, which made it harder for utilities to retire coal and other fossil fuel power plants. In August 2023, however, the Kentucky Public Service Commission held a hearing in which LG&E and KU revealed that 800 MW of coal capacity was offline during the outage. At Trimble County power station, 370 MW from Unit 1 was offline due to a gearbox failure, and 269 MW from Unit 2 was offline due to a frozen transmitter. Also offline were 121 MW at Mill Creek Station and 62 MW at E.W. Brown Generating Station.[10]
Emissions Data
- 2006 CO2 Emissions: 4,107,397 tons
- 2006 SO2 Emissions: 830 tons
- 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
- 2006 NOx Emissions: 3,981 tons
- 2005 Mercury Emissions: 203 lb.
Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from the Trimble County power station
In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants.[11] The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma-related episodes and asthma-related emergency room visits, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, peneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal-fired power plants. Fine particle pollution is formed from a combination of soot, acid droplets, and heavy metals formed from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and soot. Among those particles, the most dangerous are the smallest (smaller than 2.5 microns), which are so tiny that they can evade the lung's natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities.
The table below estimates the death and illness attributable to the Trimble County power station. Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.[12]
Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from the Trimble County power station
| Type of Impact | Annual Incidence | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| Deaths | 5 | $38,000,000 |
| Heart attacks | 8 | $880,000 |
| Asthma attacks | 86 | $4,000 |
| Hospital admissions | 4 | $88,000 |
| Chronic bronchitis | 3 | $1,400,000 |
| Asthma ER visits | 5 | $2,000 |
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed February 2011
Trimble County ranked 49th on list of most polluting power plants in terms of coal waste
In January 2009, Sue Sturgis of the Institute of Southern Studies compiled a list of the 100 most polluting coal plants in the United States in terms of coal combustion waste (CCW) stored in surface impoundments like the one involved in the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill.[13] The data came from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for 2006, the most recent year available.[14]
Trimble County power station ranked number 49 on the list, with 637,434 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.[13]
Citizen groups
- Coal River Mountain Watch
- Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
- Kentucky Environmental Foundation
- Kentucky Riverkeeper
- New Power
- Kentucky Environmental Foundation, Berea, KY, phone: (859) 986-7565
- Sierra Club Cumberland Chapter
- Valley Watch, John Blair, contact [at] valleywatch.net
- Kentucky Sierra Club, staff [at] kentucky.sierraclub.org
- Appalachian Voices, outreatch [at] appvoices.org
- Save the Valley
Articles and Resources
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 1.29 1.30 1.31 1.32 1.33 1.34 1.35 1.36 https://web.archive.org/web/20200612191408/https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860m/archive/xls/november_generator2019.xlsx. Archived from the original on 12 June 2020.
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 https://web.archive.org/web/20191116210428/https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860m/archive/xls/december_generator2018.xlsx. Archived from the original on 16 November 2019.
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ↑ "Trimble County Generating Station," LG&E website, accessed Feb 2015
- ↑ “Tracking New Coal-Fired Power Plants,” National Energy Technology Lab, May 2007, page 14. (Pdf)
- ↑ "Stopping the Coal Rush", Sierra Club, accessed January 2008. (This is a Sierra Club list of new coal plant proposals.)
- ↑ "Fighting Pollution from Aging Coal Plants" Environmental Law and Policy Center, August 12, 2009
- ↑ "Trimble County 2" Energy Justice Network, accessed November 2011.
- ↑ "Stopping the Coal Rush", Sierra Club, accessed May 2009. (This is a Sierra Club list of new coal plant proposals.)
- ↑ "Trimble," Beyond Coal, accessed Feb 2015
- ↑ "Coal-fired power failures during winter storm come to light months later," Kentucky Lantern, September 8, 2023
- ↑ "The Toll from Coal: An Updated Assessment of Death and Disease from America's Dirtiest Energy Source," Clean Air Task Force, September 2010.
- ↑ "Technical Support Document for the Powerplant Impact Estimator Software Tool," Prepared for the Clean Air Task Force by Abt Associates, July 2010
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Sue Sturgis, "Coal's ticking timebomb: Could disaster strike a coal ash dump near you?," Institute for Southern Studies, January 4, 2009.
- ↑ TRI Explorer, EPA, accessed January 2009.
Additional data
To access additional data, including interactive maps of the power stations, downloadable datasets, and summary data, please visit the Global Coal Plant Tracker and the Global Oil and Gas Plant Tracker on the Global Energy Monitor website.
