What the PJM Generation Retirement Queue Currently Looks Like

Courtesy of PJM

Two weeks ago I was asked to assist with the startup of one of four converted coal-to-natural gas boilers in Virginia. At the plant, a 150 MWe, eight boiler coal fired cogen plant, half of the boiler burners were being converted to natural gas. What I was hearing for the reasoning behind the investment mirrored what you have read in the news - it was just too expensive to operate while burning coal.

So, like any engineer, it got me thinking about how ubiquitous these conversions or closings actually are. Fortunately, PJM maintains an awesome website with tons of downloadable data. Under the Planning section of their site you can find a list of power plants who have applied for deactivation. I was able to download this data and run some quick analysis. Note that these are planned deactivations and the applications can be withdrawn in the future (so no guarantee of retirement).

In PJM’s retirement queue, as of March 27, 2019, there are 62 plants representing about 12,722 MWs of capacity. Coal fueled plants represent about 40% of the number of plant retirements, and about 55% of the capacity. Note that while only 5 nuclear fueled plants are retiring, they represent another 37% of capacity (92% of capacity retirement is from coal and nuclear)!

Data courtesy of PJM

Data courtesy of pjm

And my next question was, “in what states are the coal and nuclear retirements from?”

Data courtesy of PJM

Data courtesy of pjm

As you can see, plant retirements in Ohio dominate all others. Total plant retirement capacity in Ohio is 5934 MW, or about 46% of all PJM retirements.

Fortunately for us, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission (PUCO) publishes a long-term energy forecast that details current and forecasted energy generation, consumption, and other great info. Turns out that as of December 2018, Ohio gets 45% of it’s electricity generation from coal fired sources, 38% from natural gas, and 15% from nuclear. And in 2016, the non-coincident summer peak load was 31,469 MW. Now, if we figure the PJM plant projected retirement date goes out to 2020/22, that means Ohio could lose 20% of it’s capacity in the next three years!

Graph courtesy of Ohio Public Utilities Commission

And so what is our take-away from this shallow dive? There is an obvious disproportionate amount of coal-fired assets that are currently planned to retire, but there is also a surprisingly large capacity of nuclear planned as well. Those who advocate coal plant retirement as an environmental goal will be pleased, but keep in mind how much emission free nuclear energy is going with it. Also keep in mind that along with these fuel types goes a stable base-load asset with fuel that is cheaply stored on-site.

Another interesting finding was PJM’s Learning Center that discusses (in plain English) what steps are taken when a generating plant retires. See the image/diagram below (from PJM). In short, generator retirements and any required system upgrades to keep the grid running smoothly are included in the PJM Regional Transmission Expansion Planning process.

Explaining Power Plant Retirements in PJM

Per PJM:

PJM Ensures that replacement generation is available to cover lost MWs from the retired plant - this replacement could come from newly built power plants, upgrades to existing plants, or from sources external to PJM. PJM’s capacity market helps secure power supply resources to meet future demand on the grid.

Since transmission lines and distribution lines are all interconnected, upgrades to the system allow electricity to flow on multiple paths and in turn increase the overall flow of electricity.

This means that these kinds of upgrades typically end up bringing more MW (in this example, 1000 MW) onto the system as a whole than the amount of MW lost (800 MW) at a single point, from the retired plant.