![Fayette Power Project](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Fayette_Power_Project.jpg)
The Fayette Power Project, also known as Sam Seymour Power Plant, is a
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 dea ...
-fired
power plant
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 pow ...
located near
La Grange, Texas
La Grange ( ) is a city in Fayette County, Texas, United States, near the Colorado River. La Grange is in the center of the Texas-German belt. The population was 4,391 at the 2020 census, and in 2018 the estimated population was 4,632. La Grange ...
in
Fayette County, Texas
Fayette County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 24,435. Its county seat is La Grange. The county was created in 1837 and organized the next year.
History
Fayette County was established ...
. It is owned by
Austin Energy
Austin Energy is a publicly owned utility providing electrical power to the city of Austin, Texas and surrounding areas. Established in 1895, the utility is a department of the City of Austin and returns its profits to the city's general fund to ...
and the
Lower Colorado River Authority
The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) is a nonprofit public utility created in November 1934 by the Texas Legislature. LCRA's mission is to enhance the lives of the Texans it serves through water stewardship, energy and community service. LCR ...
(LCRA) and operated by LCRA.
Three generating units comprise the Fayette Power Project:
* Unit 1, completed in 1979, with a generating capacity of 615
megawatts
The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Watt ...
* Unit 2, completed in 1980, with a generating capacity of 615 megawatts
* Unit 3, completed in 1988, with a generating capacity of 460 megawatts
The main source of
fuel
A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy but ...
for the Fayette Power Project is low-
sulfur
Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...
coal from 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 ...
in
Wyoming
Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...
. Cooling water is provided by the
Fayette County Reservoir
Fayette County Reservoir is a power station cooling reservoir on Cedar Creek in the Colorado River basin, 3 miles west of Fayetteville, Texas and 10 miles east of La Grange, Texas. The reservoir was created in 1978 when a dam was built on the cr ...
, a
freshwater
Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. Although the term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water, it does include ...
reservoir
A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation.
Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...
.
History
During the
2021 Texas power crisis, Fayette Power Project was reported to have lost 453MW of generation capacity across Units 1 and 2 on February 17, 2021.
See also
*
List of power stations in Texas
This is a list of electricity-generating power stations in the U.S. state of Texas, sorted by type and name. In 2019, Texas had a total summer capacity of 125,117 MW through all of its power plants, and a net generation of 483,201 GWh. ...
References
External links
Lower Colorado River Authority page for the Fayette Power Project
Energy infrastructure completed in 1979
Energy infrastructure completed in 1980
Energy infrastructure completed in 1988
Coal-fired power stations in Texas
Buildings and structures in Fayette County, Texas
Lower Colorado River Authority
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