Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday ordered the Orlando Utilities Commission, a municipal utility, to continue running its 465-MW, coal-fired Stanton Unit 1 instead of placing it in “cold shutdown” to address what the department deems to be an energy emergency in Florida.
- As evidence of the emergency, DOE said the North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s most recent long-term reliability report deemed Florida to be at “normal risk” for long-term energy adequacy. However, the report highlights that projections for resource and transmission growth in Florida lag what is needed to support new data centers and other large loads, DOE said in its 90-day emergency order.
- OUC plans to fully comply with the order and will delay placing its Stanton Unit 1 in cold shutdown, Mike Codichini, a utility spokesman, said in an email. The utility didn’t respond to questions about how much it estimated it would cost to comply with the order or the status of coal stockpiles for the unit.
Dive Insight:
The DOE order is the latest in a string of similar 90-day orders affecting six other power plants, including five coal-fired generators. The order was issued on the same day the Trump administration said it planned to spend $850 million to support coal-fired power plants and the coal sector.
So far, the DOE has reissued the 90-day orders before previous ones expire. They are issued under the Federal Power Act’s section 202(c). The DOE has argued in court that the emergencies the orders are designed to address don’t need to be imminent.
In its order on the Stanton unit, the DOE said that the OUC’s resource adequacy concerns were seen during Winter Storm Fern when exceptionally cold weather covered large sections of the U.S. Orlando’s utility asked for and received two section 202(c) emergency orders to preserve reliability during the winter storm, the department said…