Clean(er) slate for SC energy

Oct 07 - Florence Morning News

The energy landscape of South Carolina and the country is rapidly and dramatically changing in light of cost-effective energy that is also greener and more efficient than that of the past.

Progress Energy Carolinas, a subsidiary of Duke Energy -- which Progress Energy merged with recently -- saw the retirement Monday of its only coal-fired power plant in South Carolina, the 177-megawatt H.B. Robinson Unit 1, decommissioned after 42 years in service.

With the Robinson unit retirement and the Cape Fear Power plant neat Moncure, N.C., and one in Wilmington, N.C., in 2013, Progress Energy Carolinas will have retired all of its coal-fired plants without advanced environmental controls.

"Really what you see here is a combination of a few drivers," Erin Culbert, a spokesperson for Duke Energy, said. "Natural gas prices have been a prominent piece of the puzzle, but that really wasn't the case six or seven years ago when the planning began for these new facilities. Equally important is the pressure on requirements for the coal plants, so as we begin to plan on how to meet customer demand, fuel prices, environmental demand and upcoming, expected environmental regulations are taken into consideration in tandem with other factors."

Once the plants are closed, it will have represented 1,600 megawatts taken off the grid. They are being replaced by a 925 megawatt cleaner-burning natural gas combined-cycle plant in Goldsboro, N.C., a new 625-megawatt gas plant at its Sutton plant in North Carolina, both in 2013, and the company's current 614 megawatt unit in Hamlet, N.C..

Meanwhile, the Robinson plant will be deconstructed and cleaned up, painting a clearer picture of natural gas as it attempts to unseat coal as the second major source of electricity generation in South Carolina.

Figures from the Energy Information Agency (EIA) show in 2000 just 1 percent of the electricity generated in the state came from natural gas, with 42 percent from coal and 54.5 from nuclear.

In 2010 natural gas electricity generation skyrocketed to 10.5 percent of the picture with coal dropping to 36.2 percent and nuclear still commanding the lead at 49.9 percent.

Energy production breakdown for SCE&G in 2011 was 48 percent coal, 29 percent natural gas and 19 percent nuclear, a diverse mix and one that will approach equilibrium shortly, according to spokesperson Robert Yanity.

"What we will see when our nuclear plant comes online in 2018 is about a 33-33-33 percent split," Yanity said. "That's one of the things we like to do is to have a diversified fuel sources because you don't know what can happen in the future with fuel prices, like if a hurricane was to hit the Gulf and take natural gas offline."

SCE&G, owned by SCANA Corp. and state-owned utility Santee Cooper, are building two nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer plant that will generate 1,117 megawatts of electricity each, with SCE&G taking 55 percent of that capacity when they come online in 2017 and 2018 just as SCE&G finishes closing several coal-fired facilities.

The company is retiring Unit 1 at Canadays Plant near Walterboro by the end of the year and retiring the remaining two units by the end of 2017 after they are switched to natural gas in 2015. Units one and two at the McMeekin plant will do the same with both transitioning to natural gas then retiring in 2018, as well as Urquhart plant near Aiken.

Since 2008, SCE&G has installed more than $600 million in advanced environmental controls to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury, but found adding these controls to older plants was cost prohibitive. The company will have five units left running coal in the state and 22 running natural gas.

"This is going to balance out nicely and will balance out and give us extra capacity for our future needs," Yanity said.

Santee Cooper idled the two units at its 46-year-old Dolphus M. Grainger plant in Conway earlier this year and is still evaluating potential coal-fire plant idles or possible retirements for their eight other units, though three units at Cross Powerhouse in Berkley were built within the past 20 years and have environmental controls in place.

"In some cases, when it makes sense, we're buying natural gas generation even though we could buy coal and stockpile it because we have the equipment and facilities for that," Santee Cooper spokesperson Mollie Gore said. "At the same time, we can buy electricity from other providers and use it to give it to our customers. With natural gas being as cheap as it is, we're doing that sometimes before putting some of our coal units online."

Advancements in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has fueled a glut of gas as it's fracked from shale rock, porous limestone and sandstone, helping lower and stabilize notoriously volatile prices.

U.S. natural gas prices for electric companies over the past 10 years have been as low as $2.85 per thousand cubic feet to as high as $12.41 in June 2008 to the sub-$4 range where it is now at $3.53 in July. Proved U.S. reserves were 317.6 trillion cubic feet in 2010, an increase of 12 percent, according to the EIA.

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