Big Brown Power Plant was a 1.15-gigawatt (1,150 MW)

coal power plant A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts capacity. They generate about a th ...

located northeast of Fairfield near Fairfield Lake State Park in Freestone County,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. It was operated by Vistra Corp's subsidiary,

Luminant Luminant is a Texas-based electric utility. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy Future Holdings Corporation. Luminant's operations include electricity generation and wholesaling, mining, construction, and development. The company has capa ...

. The plant operated from 1971 to 2018.

History

Big Brown was constructed by Texas Utilities (now known as Luminant) and went into operation in 1971. It has two units. Big Brown Creek was impounded to form the plant's cooling source. The dam was completed in 1969 creating

Fairfield Lake Fairfield may refer to: Places Australia * Fairfield, New South Wales, a western suburb of Sydney. **Electoral district of Fairfield, the corresponding seat in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly * Fairfield, Queensland * Fairfield, Victor ...

. The power plant used lignite from the nearby Turlington Mine and later supplemented with coal from

Peabody Energy Peabody Energy is a coal mining and energy company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its primary business consists of the mining, sale, and distribution of coal, which is purchased for use in electricity generation and steelmaking. Peabody ...

's Rawhide Mine in the

Powder River Basin The Powder River Basin is a geologic structural basin in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about east to west and north to south, known for its extensive coal reserves. The former hunting grounds of the Oglala Lakota, the area is very s ...

of Wyoming. To improve the overall fuel mix and to reduce reliance on the nearby Turlington Mine whose lignite production was decreasing, coal from the Powder River Basin was blended into the fuel beginning in 2000. LO-NOx burners were installed in both boilers in 2001 to curtail nitrogen oxide () emissions. emissions were reduced again in 2008 with

selective non-catalytic reduction Selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR) is a method to lessen nitrogen oxide emissions in conventional power plants that burn biomass, incineration, waste and coal. The process involves injecting either ammonia or urea into the firebox of the boil ...

(SNCR) systems being retrofitted by Fluor to Big Brown's units. The plant was temporarily idled in 2011 in order to overhaul its boilers. This was to fulfill the

United States Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it ...

's (EPA) Cross-State Air Pollution Rule to reduce its sulfur dioxide () emissions. With the plant idling, Luminant halted lignite extraction at the nearby Turlington Mine until the plant resumed electricity generation. Claiming lignite reserves were nearly exhausted at Turlington Mine, Luminant made plans in 2014 to close the mine by 2018 and rely solely on coal from the

Closure

It was announced on October 13, 2017 that Luminant was to either shut down or sell to another concern Big Brown in early-2018 due to economic factors such as low natural gas prices and growth in renewable energy. The following month,

Electric Reliability Council of Texas The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT) is an American organization that operates Texas's electrical grid, the Texas Interconnection, which supplies power to more than 25 million Texas customers and represents 90 percent of the s ...

(ERCOT) approved of the shut down. ERCOT found the two-unit Big Brown plant was "not required to support ERCOT transmission system reliability", and authorized its closure by February 12, 2018.

References

External links

Luminant page for Big Brown Power Plant
{Dead link, date=October 2019 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes Energy infrastructure completed in 1971 Energy infrastructure completed in 1972 Buildings and structures in Freestone County, Texas Former coal-fired power stations in Texas Vistra Corp

History

Closure

See also

References

External links