Michigan City Generating Station 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 ...
and
natural gas
Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...
-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 on the shore of
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...
in
Michigan City, Indiana. It is operated by Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), owned by
NiSource
NiSource Inc. is one of the largest fully regulated utility companies in the United States, serving approximately 3.5 million natural gas customers and 500,000 electric customers across six states through its local Columbia Gas and NIPSCO brands ...
.
The station was built on the location of a large sand dune, the
Hoosier Slide, which had been removed by mining for glassmaking sand.
Future
NIPSCO announced plans in 2018 to continue to operate the Michigan City Generating Station in the short term but to allow it to run down, pending final shutdown in approximately 2028. The demolition of the station would free up approximately 1 mile of Lake Michigan lakefront space.
Misconception
The use of a
hyperboloid
In geometry, a hyperboloid of revolution, sometimes called a circular hyperboloid, is the surface generated by rotating a hyperbola around one of its principal axes. A hyperboloid is the surface obtained from a hyperboloid of revolution by defo ...
cooling tower
A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and ...
at the station has been mistaken as evidence for a nuclear power plant at this location when in fact there are no nuclear power plants in the state of Indiana. A nuclear power plant was proposed for the
Bailly Generating Station
The Bailly Generating Station was a 604 megawatt ( MW) coal power plant located in Burns Harbor, Indiana, on the shore of Lake Michigan adjacent to the Port of Indiana. The plant, which began operation in 1962 and tripled its capacity in 1968, ...
approximately 17 km to the south-southwest but was canceled in 1981.
See also
*
List of power stations in Indiana
This is a list of electricity-generating power stations in the U.S. state of Indiana, sorted by type and name. In 2019, Indiana had a total summer capacity of 26,665 MW through all of its power plants, and a net generation of 102,505 GWh. The c ...
References
External links
Coal-fired power stations in Indiana
Natural gas-fired power stations in Indiana
Michigan City, Indiana
Buildings and structures in LaPorte County, Indiana
Energy infrastructure completed in 1950
Energy infrastructure completed in 1951
Energy infrastructure completed in 1974
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