Oak Grove Power Plant is a 1.79-gigawatt (1,796 MW),

coal power plant A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts capacity. They generate about a th ...

located north of

Franklin Franklin may refer to: People * Franklin (given name) * Franklin (surname) * Franklin (class), a member of a historical English social class Places Australia * Franklin, Tasmania, a township * Division of Franklin, federal electoral d ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

in Robertson County, Texas. The plant is operated by Luminant, a subsidiary of Vistra Energy. It began operations in 2010.

History

Plans for Oak Grove began in the 1970s as Texas Power & Light (a forerunner of Luminant) and

Alcoa Alcoa Corporation (an acronym for Aluminum Company of America) is a Pittsburgh-based industrial corporation. It is the world's eighth-largest producer of aluminum. Alcoa conducts operations in 10 countries. Alcoa is a major producer of primary ...

made an agreement to jointly operate a power plant named Twin Oak Steam Electric Station in Robertson County. The plan was to construct two, 750 MW units to burn

lignite Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, is a soft, brown, combustible, sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It has a carbon content around 25–35%, and is considered the lowest rank of coal due to its relatively low heat ...

and be ready for commercial generation by 1981. The electricity generated would run to Alcoa's

aluminium smelting Aluminium smelting is the process of extracting aluminium from its oxide, alumina, generally by the Hall-Héroult process. Alumina is extracted from the ore bauxite by means of the Bayer process at an List of alumina refineries, alumina refinery. ...

facility in

Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...

, Texas. Twin Oaks Reservoir was developed by impounding Duck Creek in 1982 to act as a cooling source for the plant. In 1983, Alcoa attempted to sell its stake in Twin Oak to

Halliburton Halliburton Company is an American multinational corporation responsible for most of the world's hydraulic fracturing operations. In 2009, it was the world's second largest oil field service company. It has operations in more than 70 countries ...

who was seeking electricity to offer to the owners of the troubled

South Texas Nuclear Generating Station The South Texas Project Electric Generating Station (also known as STP, STPEGS, South Texas Project), is a nuclear power station southwest of Bay City, Texas, United States. STP occupies a site west of the Colorado River about southwest of Houst ...

. Ultimately, Alcoa sold its stake back to Texas Utilities in 1984. As electricity demand in Texas stagnated, construction on Twin Oak continued to be deferred until the air permit was withdrawn in 1994. The plant was renamed from Twin Oak to Oak Grove when construction restarted in 2007 by Luminant. Construction resumed in order to meet future electricity demand and following the

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is the environmental agency for the state of Texas. The commission's headquarters are located at 12100 Park 35 Circle in Austin. The fourth largest environmental agency in the United States (an ...

(TCEQ) granting Luminant a new air permit for Oak Grove. The plant was reconfigured and redesigned to meet current emissions requirements. This included the addition of

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) systems to reduce

nitrogen oxide Nitrogen oxide may refer to a binary compound of oxygen and nitrogen, or a mixture of such compounds: Charge-neutral *Nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen(II) oxide, or nitrogen monoxide *Nitrogen dioxide (), nitrogen(IV) oxide * Nitrogen trioxide (), or n ...

() emissions and

activated carbon Activated carbon, also called activated charcoal, is a form of carbon commonly used to filter contaminants from water and air, among many other uses. It is processed (activated) to have small, low-volume pores that increase the surface area avail ...

which prevents

mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...

from being released. After Fluor completed the necessary construction work, Unit 1 came online in December 2009 and Unit 2 came online in June 2010. Oak Grove utilizes lignite exacted from the nearby Kosse Mine.

References

{{reflist

External links

Luminant page for Oak Grove Power Plant
Energy infrastructure completed in 2009 Energy infrastructure completed in 2010 Coal-fired power stations in Texas Buildings and structures in Robertson County, Texas Vistra Corp

History

See also

References

External links