Brayton gas conversion considered

BURNING QUESTION: Brayton Point Power Station owner Energy Capital Partners has given little indication of what they intend to do with the 1,530-megawatt facility when it stops burning coal. / COURTESY DOMINION RESOURCES
BURNING QUESTION: Brayton Point Power Station owner Energy Capital Partners has given little indication of what they intend to do with the 1,530-megawatt facility when it stops burning coal. / COURTESY DOMINION RESOURCES

Coal is on its way out in New England and the future of the region’s largest coal-fired power plant, Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, is uncertain.
Just six months after they purchased Brayton Point in a package deal with two other power plants, new owners Energy Capital Partners recently declared the facility outmoded and announced plans to stop generating electricity there in 2017.
Although Brayton Point has been operating far below capacity and cheap natural gas has pushed many coal plants across the country out of business, the decision caught local leaders by surprise.
The plant has long been the largest employer and taxpayer in town and New Jersey-based private-equity firm Energy Capital Partners has given little indication of what they intend to do with the 1,530-megawatt facility when it stops burning coal. The jobs of 240 plant workers could be lost when the plant closes its doors.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen with it,” said Donald P. Setters Jr., chairman of the Somerset Board of Selectmen. “The new owners really aren’t in the power business per se. They’ve never said what they intend to do, but I am sure they want to keep it as a power plant.”
If burning coal under increasingly strict environmental rules is uneconomical, the obvious alternative would be to convert Brayton Point to run on natural gas, the fuel that’s now dominating electrical generation due to cheap domestic supplies.
In Salem, Mass., Brayton Point’s former owner Dominion sold another coal-fired plant last year to a separate New Jersey company that plans to convert it to natural gas.
And indeed, that’s the scenario most local leaders appear to prefer.
Setters said a conversion to gas “would be ideal.”
State Sen. Michael Rodrigues, D-Westport, who has been named chairman of a task force studying the future of Brayton Point, said the existing utility infrastructure at Brayton Point makes converting it attractive.
“It makes a lot of sense that that option is explored.” Rodrigues said. “On that property is all the transmission infrastructure. All the transmission lines are now plugged into the coal-generating plant, but it would make sense to substitute gas.” Energy Capital Partners also acknowledged the option of turning Brayton Point into a gas plant.
“We did not buy Brayton Point station for any purpose other than to operate it as it currently exists,” said James A. Ginnetti, senior vice president of EquiPower Resources Corp., the Energy Capital subsidiary controlling the plant.
“However, we have initiated a study that will evaluate the possibility of building a new gas power plant on the site or the repowering of the existing units as options. Brayton Point will evaluate these and a number of other options for the site and will work with the local community, political leaders and other stakeholders, as appropriate.”
Of course, there are hurdles to turning Brayton Point into a natural gas plant, chief among them delivering gas to the site.
“The problem is there is a bottleneck getting gas into New England,” Setters said. “The only pipeline that feeds that plant is not sufficient in size to carry the amount of gas necessary. That can be replaced and they own the easements to do it.”
The kind of investment needed to convert a power plant may be discouraged by low demand for electricity in the area due to efficiency measures and the still-sluggish economy in Rhode Island and the South Coast, Setters said.
As natural gas has become increasingly popular for home heating and electricity generation, securing that gas has become a concern for local power plants and grid operator ISO New England.
There are only two pipelines connecting New England to the shale-gas-producing regions to the west and during periods of high demand supply goes first to homes for heating.
The increasing reliance on natural gas is perhaps the only thing that could keep Brayton Point operating on coal beyond 2017. Although ISO New England and Energy Capital could not reach an agreement on a post-2017 price for power, the grid operator can re-enter negotiations if it finds that closing the facility would put the region in jeopardy of outages.
ISO has 90 days from Oct. 6, the date Brayton Point submitted its intention to retire, to finish a “reliability assessment” on what the impact of the closure would be. If the assessment finds losing the emergency capacity of the coal plant would be harmful, ISO could restart talks on a price to keep Brayton operational, said ISO spokeswoman Marcia Blomberg.
Natural gas accounts for 52 percent of New England’s power generation and coal 3 percent.
Brayton Point opened in 1963 and by 1974 expanded to four generating units, three of which burn coal and another that burns either natural gas or oil.
Virginia-based Dominion bought Brayton Point in 2005 for $300 million and over the next seven years invested $1.1 billion on equipment to reduce its environmental impact, including the giant cooling towers to prevent dumping hot water into the bay.
Energy Capital reached an agreement to buy Brayton Point, along with two other power plants in Illinois, for $650 million in March.
Brayton Point sits on 306 acres of waterfront land and environmental groups are now hoping that once the plant stops burning coal, the property is redeveloped for a nonenergy use.
N. Jonathan Peress, vice president and director of clean-energy climate change at the Conservation Law Foundation, which has pushed to close coal plants, called expecting the plant to be rebuilt for natural gas “wishful thinking.”
“Right now as it stands it is not likely to be profitable because of the way the market is,” Peress said.
While local leaders begin the process of planning for a future without coal, another old power plant, the vacant Somerset Station on the Taunton River, was purchased at auction last week by a Boston area real estate developer for $3.95 million. No plans for the property were announced. •

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