The Nanticoke Generating Station was a
coal-fired power station in
Nanticoke Nanticoke may refer to:
* Nanticoke people in Delaware, United States
* Nanticoke language, an Algonquian language
* Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, a state-recognized tribe in New Jersey
Place names Canada
* Nanticoke, Ontario
** Nanticoke Generating S ...
,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...
in operation from 1972 to 2013. It was the largest coal power station in
North America and, at full capacity, it could provide 3,964 MW of
power
Power most often refers to:
* Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work"
** Engine power, the power put out by an engine
** Electric power
* Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events
** Abusive power
Power may a ...
into the southern
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...
power grid
An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:Kaplan, S. M. (2009). Smart Grid. Electrical Power ...
from its base in
Nanticoke Nanticoke may refer to:
* Nanticoke people in Delaware, United States
* Nanticoke language, an Algonquian language
* Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, a state-recognized tribe in New Jersey
Place names Canada
* Nanticoke, Ontario
** Nanticoke Generating S ...
, Ontario,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, and provided as much as 15% of Ontario's electricity.
It was decommissioned in 2013 as part of the
Government of Ontario
The government of Ontario (french: Gouvernement de l'Ontario) is the body responsible for the administration of the Canadian province of Ontario. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown—represented in the province by the lieutenant governorâ ...
's commitment to eliminate
coal power.
A 44 MW
photovoltaic power station, the
Nanticoke Solar Facility, was built on the site and entered service in 2019.
Prior to the commencement of decommissioning, Nanticoke was one of Canada's top ten single sources of
greenhouse gases
A greenhouse gas (GHG or GhG) is a gas that absorbs and emits radiant energy within the thermal infrared range, causing the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are water vapor (), carbon dioxide (), methane ...
.
History
The Nanticoke Generating Station was built on the site of the "Battle of Nanticoke", where in 1813 the
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
volunteer militia routed a band of American marauders who had been pillaging area farms and terrorizing the country, an exploit that inspired the British military forces and the people of
Upper Canada
The Province of Upper Canada (french: link=no, province du Haut-Canada) was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of th ...
during the
War of 1812
The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States, United States of America and its Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom ...
. The site was designated a
National Historic Site of Canada
National Historic Sites of Canada (french: Lieux historiques nationaux du Canada) are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being ...
in 1924.
Ontario Hydro
Ontario Hydro, established in 1906 as the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, was a publicly owned electricity utility in the Province of Ontario. It was formed to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity g ...
revealed plans to build a 4,000 MW fossil-fuel generating station near
Long Point, Ontario
Long Point is a sand spit and medium-sized hamlet on the north shore of Lake Erie, part of Norfolk County in the province of Ontario, Canada.
It is about long and is about across at its widest point. Lake Erie lies to the south of Long Po ...
in 1967.
[Wiancko 1981, p. 96] Its current site was selected in Nanticoke, Ontario, because of the nearby harbour, the proximity of
United States
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 ...
coal supplies, and proximity to much of Ontario's population.
The construction of the plant cost
CAN$
The Canadian dollar (symbol: $; code: CAD; french: dollar canadien) is the currency of Canada. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, there is no standard disambiguating form, but the abbreviation Can$ is often suggested by notable style ...
800 million and operations started in 1972.
Eight pulverized coal-fired steam generators were built in phases between 1973 and 1978.
By 1981, the plant was consuming 35,000 tonnes of coal per day. Over the years, another $900 million has been invested in making the plant more
energy efficient, robust, and improving its emissions.
Plant operations
Power generation and distribution
At full capacity (4000 MW) with all eight generating units functioning, the station's annual electricity production had been as high as 24 billion kilowatt-hours (
kWh), enough electricity to run nearly 2.5 million households.
Although the plant houses eight generating units, four of those units have since been retired.
(Two were retired in 2010, and two were retired in 2011.
) The remaining four units are not in operation.
Previously, power generation at this plant was on a stand-by basis, only operating during peak levels of energy consumption, or when other generating facilities are unavailable. At other times the plant would remain idle.
When demand for electricity was high, the remaining four active generating units were put into service, with the maximum potential to produce approximately 5% of Ontario's total generating capacity. (1880 MW
out of the 34,079 MW of existing power generation in the province as of January 2012.
) The plant is connected to the power grid by numerous 230,000- and 500,000-
volt
The volt (symbol: V) is the unit of electric potential, electric potential difference (voltage), and electromotive force in the International System of Units (SI). It is named after the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745–1827).
Defin ...
transmission lines
In electrical engineering, a transmission line is a specialized cable or other structure designed to conduct electromagnetic waves in a contained manner. The term applies when the conductors are long enough that the wave nature of the transmis ...
.
Cooling water
Cooling tower and water discharge of a nuclear power plant
Water cooling is a method of heat removal from components and industrial equipment. Evaporative cooling using water is often more efficient than air cooling. Water is inexpensive and no ...
for the plant was drawn from
Lake Erie
Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also h ...
using two pipes that are 6.5 m in
diameter
In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid fo ...
, stretch 550 m offshore, and sit 10 m below the surface. The plant had two multi-flue smokestacks which were both 198 m (650 ft) tall. A dock on the shore of the site allows ships to deliver coal to an on-site stock pile, which can hold up to 4.5 megatonnes.
At its peak, Nanticoke employed approximately 634 staff from the
Haldimand—Norfolk
Haldimand—Norfolk is a federal electoral district in Ontario, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1979 to 1997, and since 2004. The current Member of Parliament (MP) is Conservative Leslyn Lewis.
Geogr ...
area.
Emissions
The Nanticoke station used to be one of Canada's largest
greenhouse gas emitters and polluters. In 2001, it was the largest single source of greenhouse gases according to
Environment Canada. Due to major reductions in output since 2009, it was eventually surpassed by facilities in
Alberta
Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...
.
Decommissioning
The Government of Ontario had originally targeted to phase out all of its coal plants by 2009, but abandoned this target in 2006 to the ire of organizations representing nurses and physicians, community groups and environment groups. The province could not replace Nanticoke's energy output by the deadline, despite Units 3 and 4 at Bruce "A" being brought back online between 2003 and 2004.
Bruce Nuclear Generating Station
Bruce Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power station located on the eastern shore of Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada. It occupies 932 ha (2300 acres) of land. The facility derives its name from Bruce Township, the local municipality when ...
The province was examining replacing this output using
nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced ...
by refurbishing its existing fleet, and building two additional reactors at the
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Clarington, Ontario. It is a large nuclear facility comprising four CANDU nuclear reactors with a total output of 3,512  ...
.
Bruce Power
Bruce Power Limited Partnership is a Canadian business partnership composed of several corporations. It exists (as of 2015) as a partnership between TC Energy (31.6%), BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust (61.4%), the Power Workers Union (4%) and ...
, Canada's only private nuclear power company, also proposed building two reactors on former
Stelco lands in Nanticoke. However, this was met with immediate opposition and dismissal from the government. "It's a speculative move on the part of a private company...It doesn't enjoy the support, encouragement
rapproval...of the Government of Ontario," stated
George Smitherman
George Smitherman (born February 12, 1964) is a former Canadian politician and broadcaster. He represented the provincial riding of Toronto Centre in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1999 to 2010, when he resigned to contest the mayor ...
, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure. Bruce Power did however move ahead with the refurbishment of "A" Units 1 and 2 in 2005
and Ontario Power Generation commenced refurbishment of Darlington in 2016.
Two units at Nanticoke were shut down in fall 2010. Another two were shut down in 2011. The final four were shut down on December 31, 2013. This was made possible, in part, by the reactivation of Units 1 and 2 at Bruce Nuclear Generating Station the previous year. In July 2015, Ontario Power Generation announced it will no longer "preserve and staff Nanticoke", and the expectation is that the plant will be permanently decommissioned. Its two smokestacks were imploded using controlled demolition on February 28, 2018. The last sections were demolished on August 22, 2019.
See also
*
List of power stations in Canada
Canada is home to a wide variety of power stations (or generating stations). The lists below outline power stations of significance by type, or by the province/territory in which they reside.
By type
The following pages lists the power stations ...
*
Science and technology in Canada
Science and technology in Canada consists of three distinct but closely related phenomena:
* the diffusion of technology in Canada
* scientific research in Canada
* innovation, invention and industrial research in Canada
In 2019, Canada spent ...
Notes
References
* Wiancko, P. M. (1981)
Environmental Design and Operation of Nanticoke Thermal Generating Station Journal of Great Lakes Research, 7(2):96-104
{{Fossil fuel power ON
Ontario Hydro
Ontario Power Generation
Coal-fired power stations in Ontario
Buildings and structures in Haldimand County
Energy infrastructure completed in 1973
1973 establishments in Ontario
2013 disestablishments in Ontario
Demolished buildings and structures in Ontario
Former coal-fired power stations in Canada