Killen Station was a 618 megawatt ( MW) dual-fuel power generating facility located east of Wrightsville, Ohio in

Adams County, Ohio Adams County is a county in the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 27,477. Its county seat is West Union. The county is named after John Adams, the second President of the United States. Geography According to the ...

. The power plant had two units: one coal-fired and one oil-fired. At the time of its closure, it was operated by AES Ohio Generation, a subsidiary of the

AES Corporation The AES Corporation is an American utility and power generation company. It owns and operates power plants, which it uses to generate and sell electricity to end users and intermediaries like utilities and industrial facilities. AES is headquart ...

. The plant began operations in 1982 and ceased generation on May 31, 2018.

History

Construction of Killen Station began in 1974 and commenced commercial generation in 1982 at a cost of $588 million. The plant was named after Robert B. Killen, a former chairman of

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). A second coal unit was planned, but was cancelled in 1980 after estimates for electric use in the next decade were revised showing demand stagnating. Killen's coal unit was retrofitted with a

selective catalytic reduction Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is a means of converting nitrogen oxides, also referred to as with the aid of a catalyst into diatomic nitrogen (), and water (). A reductant, typically anhydrous ammonia (), aqueous ammonia (), or a urea () s ...

(SCR) system between 2003 and 2004 by

Black & Veatch Black & Veatch (BV) is the largest engineering firm in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Founded in 1915 in Kansas City, Missouri it is now headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas It is a global engineering, procurement, construction ( EPC) and c ...

. The SCR was installed to comply with the Clean Air Act's 1990 amendments and Ohio's State Implementation Plan (SIP).

Flue-gas desulfurization Flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) is a set of technologies used to remove sulfur dioxide () from exhaust flue gases of fossil-fuel power plants, and from the emissions of other sulfur oxide emitting processes such as waste incineration. Methods ...

(FGD) equipment, designed by the

Chiyoda Corporation is a global engineering company specialized in oil and gas midstream for gas processing and LNG, downstream refinery and petrochemicals facilities design and construction. Chiyoda is headquartered in Yokohoma, Japan with engineering offices abr ...

, was installed at Killen in 2007 to reduce

sulfur dioxide Sulfur dioxide (IUPAC-recommended spelling) or sulphur dioxide (traditional Commonwealth English) is the chemical compound with the formula . It is a toxic gas responsible for the odor of burnt matches. It is released naturally by volcanic activ ...

() emissions. In August 2014, Duke Energy sold its stake in the coal unit to

Dynegy Dynegy Inc. is an electric company based in Houston, Texas, in the United States. It owns and operates a number of power stations in the U.S., all of which are natural gas-fueled or coal-fueled. Dynegy was acquired by Vistra Corp on April 9, 20 ...

. Operations at Killen were transferred from DP&L to AES Ohio Generation in October 2017.

Closure

DP&L announced plans in March 2017 to close Killen Station along with its sister plant J.M. Stuart Station due to economic and environmental challenges in an agreement with the

Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...

and several unnamed parties. The commercial generation of Killen ceased on May 31, 2018. In December 2019, DP&L sold the site to Kingfisher Development for remediation and redevelopment.

Incidents

A worker was killed in August 1984 after getting pinned in a coal chute. A worker died in June 1994 from hyperthermia after attempting to rescue workers stranded in the plant's smokestack. On December 9, 2020, contractors were working to prepare the site for demolition. At around 8:30 A.M. the primary building collapsed injuring several and trapping others. Three workers were rescued from the collapse. Three days later, one worker was found dead and on January 8, 2021, thirty days after the collapse, the final worker's body was recovered.

Archaeological site

The lands owned by DP&L for Killen Station contain two archaeological sites that date back to the

Adena Adena may refer to: Artists *ADENA, Romanian singer-songwriter *Adeena Karasick (born 1965), Canadian poet, performance artist, and essayist *Adena Halpern (born 1968), American author *Adena Jacobs (born 1982), Australian theatre director Places ...

and

Fort Ancient Fort Ancient is a name for a Native American culture that flourished from Ca. 1000-1750 CE and predominantly inhabited land near the Ohio River valley in the areas of modern-day southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, southeastern Indiana and western ...

cultures. To prevent the sites from being disturbed during construction of the power plant, the

Ohio Historical Society Ohio History Connection, formerly The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society and Ohio Historical Society, is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1885. Headquartered at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio, Ohio History Connect ...

applied to the

Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the mana ...

to include Wamsley Village and an Adena

burial mound Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...

on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

. Both listings were added to the National Register in 1974. Archeology was conducted at Wamsley Village and the mound. The archeologists discovered a number of artifacts and burials. These sites remain preserved today.

References

External links