Cumberland Fossil Plant is a pulverized
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when ...
-
fired power station
A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid.
Many ...
located west of
Cumberland City,
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
,
USA
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, on the south bank of
Lake Barkley
Lake Barkley, a reservoir in Livingston County, Lyon County and Trigg County in Kentucky and extending into Stewart County and Houston County in Tennessee, was impounded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1966 upon the completion of Bark ...
on the
Cumberland River. Owned and operated by
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...
(TVA), it has a gross capacity of 2,470
MW, and is the most powerful power station in Tennessee.
Description
Commissioned in 1968, the Cumberland Fossil Plant contains two identical units, rated at 1.235 GWe gross each, Units 1 and 2 were launched into service in March and November 1973, respectively. In 2004, the two units accounted for almost 12% of TVA's total electricity generation.
[ As of the mid 2010s, however, TVA's Sequoyah Nuclear Plant near ]Soddy Daisy, Tennessee
Soddy-Daisy is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 13,070 at the 2020 census and estimated to be 13,619 in 2022. The city was formed in 1969 when the communities of Soddy (to the north) and Daisy (to the sout ...
, with a slightly lower capacity, was generating more power.barge
Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels ...
s along the Cumberland River waterway. The plant consumes about 20,000 tons of coal a day.[ All of the waste heat is dumped into Cumberland River water.
]
Pollution and releases into environment
Environmental protection measures
To reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, both units at Cumberland use wet limestone scrubbers. To reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx), the units use low-NOx burners as well as selective catalytic reduction systems, which were completed in 2004.[
]
See also
*List of power stations in Tennessee
The U.S. state of Tennessee receives its power from a variety of sources. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the primary utility in Tennessee which generates electricity and sells it to hundreds of local utilities and industrial customers. Li ...
* List of the largest coal power stations in the United States
References
External links
TVA Page for Cumberland Fossil PlantChimney Diagram
{{supertall chimneys
Towers completed in 1970
Energy infrastructure completed in 1973
Towers in Tennessee
Coal-fired power stations in Tennessee
Buildings and structures in Stewart County, Tennessee
Chimneys in the United States
1973 establishments in Tennessee