TVA To Construct $820 Million Natural Gas Power Plant At Tennessee

Published: 04-Jun-2009

By: Staff Writer Staff Writer Staff Writer

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), to comply with a North Carolina lawsuit over the air quality, plans to construct a natural gas power station in northeastern Tennessee. The gas power station is expected to generate 880 megawatt (MW) of power and is valued at $820 million. The combined-cycle gas facility would be as large as John Sevier coal-fired station in Rogersville, constructed in 1950s.

Steve Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energytold the TVA Board of Directors: Retiring those (coal) plants is the right way to go. As a general rule, we are supportive of natural gas ... because it is a cleaner fuel source than coal (and) has virtually no sulfur emissions.

US District Judge Lacy Thornburg ruled in January that four TVA coal plants in Tennessee and Alabama, including the John Sevier station, were polluting North Carolina's air. He ordered to clean them up by the end of 2011. TVA petitioned for a year but was turned down. Eventually TVA board decided to postpone two projects — building a combined-cycle gas plant at TVA's Caledonia site in Steens and expanding a gas turbine plant at Gleason, Tenn. T

The three gas turbines at the new station would commence work by 2011, and by summer 2012 a heat recovery system will start working, to generate more power. The company is looking for a site near the Sevier plant, informed managers at TVA.

TVA supplies power through 158 distributors serving around 8.7 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia.

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