POWER September 2017 - 43

ENERGY MARKETS
Brayton Point, From Coal to Oil, Back to Coal, to Done
New England Electric Co. (NEECO) in 1957 began construction
in Somerset, Massachusetts, of what would become the largest
fossil-fueled generating plant in New England, at a 300-acre site
called Brayton Point on the Taunton River (Figure 3). It was designed
as a coal-fired plant, with a generating capacity from four
units of more than 1,500 MW.
On May 31, 2017, Brayton Point's four units shut down for good,
having made a transition from coal to heavy fuel oil and back
to coal over the years. During those years, it also saw a series
of owners, starting with the conventional, investor-owned New
England Electric, and ending up a property of Houston-based merchant
generator Dynegy.
The first Brayton Point unit went into service in 1963 and the
others followed quickly. Coal was cheap, but during the 1960s,
coal prices were rising and oil prices were a bargain, particularly
the heavy residual oil at the bottom of the crude oil refining process.
In 1969, New England Electric converted the baseload plant
to oil, which had become the dominant fossil fuel for electric
generation in the region.
Then the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo hit, as Arab oil producers cut
off exports to the U.S. in a political move against U.S. support
for Israel. Oil prices soared astronomically. Throughout the decade,
the utility saw its costs and customer rates rise-and profits
fall-from Brayton Point.
In 1981, newly hired executive Glenn Schleede, who had been
the No. 3 in the Reagan administration's Office of Management
and Budget, honchoed the conversion of Brayton Point back to
coal. With customary showmanship, Schleede brought the first
shipment of coal to the plant from an Exxon-developed mine in
Colombia. The South American nation was developing a small coal
industry and Schleede bought the coal from the new El Cerrejón
mine. Schleede told me at the time that he was sending a signal
to U.S. coal producers that they did not have a monopoly on
supplying coal to U.S. utilities. El Cerrejón has since become the
largest coal strip mine in the world, according to Sourcewatch.
org. Colombia is now the fifth-largest coal producer in the world,
according to Reuters.
In 1984, New England Electric brought coal from British Columbia.
I reported at the time that the surface-mined coal was
" transported 780 miles by rail to Vancouver, shipped down the
Pacific Coast, through the Panama Canal and across the Caribbean
to Massachusetts, " at a price competitive with Appalachian coal.
I wrote, " This move was instigated by Glenn Schleede, president
of NEECO's fuel subsidiary, New England Energy, and the leading
system, cleaner and greener, " said van Welie.
Changing Generation Mix
During the mid-2000s, the generating mix
changed rapidly, driven largely by the rise
in natural gas produced by horizontal drilling
and hydraulic fracturing. By 2015,
natural gas held the dominant market share
at 49%, followed by nuclear, renewables,
coal, and-badly trailing a market it once
September 2017 | POWER
dominated-oil.
At the moment, New England faces an
oversupply of electric generation, as van
Welie acknowledged, which he said was
" temporary overcapacity. " New market entry,
mostly gas, he said, " cleared a bit more than
we needed. Demand reduced slightly, and
we are expecting to see more [retirements of
older coal and oil capacity]. "
The market profile will continue to change
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3. A long and storied history. Brayton Point began service
in 1963, running for more than 50 years before closing May 31, 2017.
The power plant on the Taunton River in Massachusetts had a series
of owners and also several different generating fuels. It was originally
designed as a coal-fired plant, but was converted to oil soon
after it opened, before later being converted back to coal. Courtesy:
Dominion
militant in the coal industry's battle with the U.S. railroads over
transportation rates. His move toward foreign coal is intended to
serve notice on the rails that coal customers have some weapons
to fight rail rate increases. "
During the 1990s and into the new century, Brayton Point
faced a series of environmental challenges, including adding NOx
controls in 2006 and closed-cycle cooling in 2011 to replace
once-through cooling. As the years progressed and environmental
costs and political protests dogged the plant, it continued to
be a profitable enterprise.
Over that period, when electric restructuring led to the separation
of generation and transmission from formerly vertically
integrated companies, Brayton Point went through multiple
ownerships: PG&E Corp. (transformed into USGen New England),
to Dominion Resources, to Energy Capital Partners, to Dynegy
in 2014.
During that game of business musical chairs, fracking happened,
stunning the fuel market with enormous and cheap
supplies of new natural gas. Gas prices fell so low that even a
paid-off coal plant couldn't compete in the ISO-NE's wholesale
market. The Dynegy purchase of Brayton Point included a provision
to retire the plant in May 2017. The plant took its final
shipment of coal in February.
A Dynegy spokesman in Houston told the Fall River, Massachusetts,
Herald News, " We're removing all of the combustible energy
sources. Operations will discontinue. "
-Kennedy Maize
in the years ahead, according to van Welie.
Coal and oil capacity will slide (see sidebar).
For nuclear, Entergy's 640-MW Vermont
Yankee plant shut down in 2014 and
the company's 690-MW Pilgrim nuclear
plant on Cape Cod will be out of the mix in
2019. That leaves only Dominion's two-unit,
2,000-MW Millstone station in Connecticut,
the largest generating plant in New England,
and NextEra Energy's single unit, the 1,20043
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POWER September 2017

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