NRG Energy said Monday that it would add the ability to burn natural gas at two of its power plants located within the PJM Interconnection and expects to announce plans to add gas-fired capability at many more plants.
The company will add pipelines to deliver natural gas to the 732 MW Avon Lake coal-fired plant near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the 330 MW coal-fired New Castle plant in Ohio. The coal-fired boilers at both plants will be modified to burn natural gas, but they will retain their ability to burn coal, David Gaier, a spokesman, said.
The two plants were bid into the PJM Interconnection's capacity auction in May and cleared, Lee Davis, president of the company's eastern division, said during a conference call held Monday morning with analysts.
The projects should be online in May 2016.
The company ruled out the adding natural gas capability at the 460-MW Elrama plant in Pennsylvania because of poor market conditions and complicated gas conversion process, Davis said. GenOn, before its merger with NRG, had planned to close the plant.
Adding the ability to burn natural gas at some plants, making them duel fuel, can often be done with far less investment than is needed to build a new gas-fired plant, Davis said.
"We are just at the start and have a lot more plants to add the capability burn natural gas," he said.
Avon Lake and New Castle were chosen to add gas capability because of their short distance to gas supplies and the simplicity of their boiler conversions, Davis said.
NRG will deactivate the 340-MW Norwalk Harbor plant in Connecticut this summer and it has cancelled plans to add equipment to the 210-MW Werner plant to comply with New Jersey high electric demand day rules. The Werner plant had limited remaining life but required a large expenditure to comply with the rules, NRG said.
The company also said it will accelerate plans to deactivate the 570-MW Portland plant in Pennsylvania, but preserve the ability to repower it with natural gas at a future date. It will be deactivated in 2014.
Deactivation of the 275-MW Titus plant in Pennsylvania was accelerated by two years to this year. Titus cannot be repowered with natural gas, the company said.
