The Walter C. Beckjord Generating Station was a 1.43-gigawatt (1,433 MW), dual-fuel power generating facility located near

New Richmond, Ohio New Richmond, also known as New Richmond on the Ohio, is a village in Ohio and Pierce townships in Clermont County, Ohio, United States, founded in 1814, along the Ohio River. The population was 2,582 at the 2010 census. Geography New Richmon ...

, 22 miles east of

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

. The plant began operation in 1952 and was decommissioned in 2014. It was jointly owned by

Duke Energy Duke Energy Corporation is an American electric power and natural gas holding company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. Overview Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Duke Energy owns 58,200 megawatts of base-load and peak generation in ...

American Electric Power American Electric Power (AEP), (railcar reporting mark: AEPX) is a major investor-owned electric utility in the United States, delivering electricity to more than five million customers in 11 states. AEP ranks among the nation's largest gen ...

(AEP), and

Dayton Power & Light DP&L Inc. is a subsidiary of AES Corporation. Through its subsidiaries The Dayton Power and Light Company and DPL Energy Resources, DP&L sells to, and generates electricity for, a customer base of over 500,000 people within a area of West Central ...

(DP&L).

Background

Of the two Beckjord power plants, one was coal-fired (Units 1–6) and the other was oil-fired (Units GT1–GT4). It was originally built by

Cinergy Cinergy Corp. ( ) was an energy company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, from 1994 to 2006. Its name is a play on the words "synergy", "energy", and "Cincinnati". History Cinergy was created on October 24, 1994, from the merger of the C ...

(originally Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company (CG&E)), which was bought by Duke Energy in 2006. The plant is named after Walter C. Beckjord, the chairman of CG&E from 1957 to 1962. CG&E installed new

electrostatic precipitator An electrostatic precipitator (ESP) is a filterless device that removes fine particles, like dust and smoke, from a flowing gas using the force of an induced electrostatic charge minimally impeding the flow of gases through the unit. In cont ...

s at Beckjord in the 1970s to reduce pollution mandated by the State of Ohio.

Closure and decommissioning

In July 2011, Duke Energy announced that Beckjord would shut down in January 2015 because of tightening environmental regulations from the

Environmental Protection Agency A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

(EPA) outweighed the benefits of retrofitting the plant. The shut down was accelerated to November 2014 after an open valve caused an oil spill into the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

the previous August. Duke Energy plead guilty in federal court in 2016 for spilling 9,000 gallons of diesel fuel into the Ohio River. The company was fined $1 million for the spill. In 2015, Duke Energy installed a battery-based energy storage system at the site for the purpose of regulating

frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...

in the electric grid. As a part of the decommissioning process, Duke Energy terminated their lease with the New Richmond Soccer Association who played soccer matches adjacent to Beckjord. Duke Energy and its co-owners, AEP and DP&L, agreed to sell Beckjord and adjacent lands to Commercial Liability Partners for an undisclosed amount in February 2018. Commercial Liability Partners will repurpose the

brownfield In urban planning, brownfield land is any previously developed land that is not currently in use. It may be potentially contaminated, but this is not required for the area to be considered brownfield. The term is also used to describe land prev ...

s for redevelopment.

References

Energy infrastructure completed in 1952 Energy infrastructure completed in 1953 Energy infrastructure completed in 1954 Energy infrastructure completed in 1958 Energy infrastructure completed in 1962 Energy infrastructure completed in 1969 Energy infrastructure completed in 1972 Buildings and structures in Clermont County, Ohio Former coal-fired power stations in Ohio Former oil-fired power stations in the United States Duke Energy American Electric Power AES Corporation 1952 establishments in Ohio 2014 disestablishments in Ohio {{US-powerstation-stub

Background

Closure and decommissioning

See also

References