The State Line Generating Plant was 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 ...
-fired electrical generating station that operated from 1929 until 2012. It was located on the coast of
Lake Michigan, bordering the state line separating
Indiana
Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
from
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
but within the corporate limits of
Hammond, Indiana. As of 2008–09, it had a year-round capacity of 515 megawatts.
Most of the plant's exterior and some of its interior infrastructure dated back to its original operation in 1929, making this plant one of the oldest large-scale urban electrical generating stations in the United States at the time it ceased operations. The plant's age meant that it generated more toxic waste, such as airborne
mercury and
nitrogen oxides 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 ...
, than most other U.S. generating plants.
Historically owned and operated by
Commonwealth Edison
Commonwealth Edison, commonly known by syllabic abbreviation as ComEd, is the largest electric utility in Illinois, and the in Chicago and much of Northern Illinois. Its service territory stretches roughly from Iroquois County on the south to ...
, the State Line Generating Plant was later owned and operated by
Dominion Resources
Dominion Energy, Inc., commonly referred to as Dominion, is a North American power and energy company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia that supplies electricity in parts of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and supplies natural gas t ...
. It was a
National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.
The plant reached the end of its operating lifespan and was permanently shut down on March 31, 2012.
Demolition was ongoing as of November 2014.
History
Samuel Insull
The State Line Generating Plant was designed in
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
style by
Graham, Anderson, Probst & White
Graham, Anderson, Probst & White (GAP&W) was a Chicago architectural firm that was founded in 1912 as Graham, Burnham & Co. This firm was the successor to D. H. Burnham & Co. through Daniel Burnham's surviving partner, Ernest R. Graham, and Burnh ...
and built in 1926–1929 under the orders of industrial magnate
Samuel Insull. Insull, who led a holding company that controlled Chicago's Commonwealth Edison electric utility, dedicated his working life to the implementation of
economies of scale
In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...
in the generation and supply of electricity.
During the 1920s, many residents of
Chicago metropolitan area
The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and h ...
had signed up to receive electrical service for the first time. Generating plants throughout the metropolitan area had developed the capacity to produce 1,310
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 Wat ...
of power to serve 1,300,000 customer households. At the same time, however, it was expected that demand for electricity would further increase. In particular, inhabitants of many rural areas throughout the United States, including rural areas adjacent to Chicago, did not yet have electrical service in 1929.
In addition to increased demand for electricity from households for purposes such as
lighting
Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylig ...
and
appliances, Insull expected substantial increases in demand for electricity from industrial-scale purchasers. In particular, Insull's holding companies also controlled the
Chicago South Shore and South Bend, an electric
railroad
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...
that ran near the site of the State Line Power Plant.
In order to fulfill the increased demand for electricity that Insull's engineers told him was expected and which he concurred was going to occur, the Insull holding companies constructed the State Line Power Plant and the Unit 1 generator within the plant. With a capacity of 208 megawatts, Unit 1 upon its operational date in 1929 was the largest
turbine
A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating ...
generator constructed up to that time. The turbine plant was built by
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
at their plant in
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...
, and carried to Hammond for assembly. Its operation increased total Chicago-area electrical generation capacity by more than 15%, to 1,518 megawatts.
Insull's optimism was sufficient that he ordered that the State Line Power Plant be constructed on a scale sufficient to allow for the insertion of further turbines in the building. Commonwealth Edison's goal was to eventually insert enough capacity into State Line to generate more than 1,000 megawatts of power – which would have made the State Line Power Plant the world's first one-
gigawatt
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 Wat ...
plant.
Unfortunately, the 1929 infrastructure projects of Insull's holding companies were financed with highly leveraged
junk bond
In finance, a high-yield bond (non-investment-grade bond, speculative-grade bond, or junk bond) is a bond that is rated below investment grade by credit rating agencies. These bonds have a higher risk of default or other adverse credit events ...
s. The
Insull firms could not survive the shock of the
Great Depression, and Insull and his investors suffered devastating financial losses. However, the State Line Power Plant had been professionally engineered and constructed, and continued to operate through the Depression, World War II, and into the postwar years.
Postwar years
Commonwealth Edison expanded the State Line Power Plant according to plan, with Unit 2 going into operation in 1938, Unit 3 in 1955, and Unit 4 in 1963.
As a result of various factors, including the advent of
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 ...
and the passage of the
Clean Air Act, by the late 20th and early 21st centuries the State Line Power Plant was entering the latter phase of its useful life. The historic Unit 1 turbine was taken out of service in 1978, followed by Unit 2 in 1979.
As of 2011, the State Line Power Plant's two newer coal-fired units, historically Units 3 and 4 (but renamed as Units 1 and 2) continued to operate with a maximum capacity of 515 megawatts. The plant employed approximately 120 full-time employees in 2011,
with employment dropping to 100 in January 2012 as the end of the plant's lifespan approached.
The State Line Power Plant's age meant that it was not fitted with many of the pollution control equipment that is mandated on more modern generating plants. Instead, State Line's operations were
grandfathered
A grandfather clause, also known as grandfather policy, grandfathering, or grandfathered in, is a provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases. Those exempt from t ...
, giving the plant the right to vent nitrogen oxides, airborne mercury, and
sulphur dioxide into the air. According to a September 2010 article in the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...
'', the State Line Power Plant was described as one of the greatest single point-source contributors to the Chicago area's ongoing noncompliant status under the
Clean Air Act.
In early May 2011, Dominion Resources informed Wall Street financial analysts that the firm did not plan to retrofit State Line with Clean Air Act pollution controls, and would instead shut the plant down in the three-year 2012–2014 period. The firm further announced in January 2012 that the planned shutdown of the 100-employee plant would take place on March 31, 2012.
Upon completion of the March 31 shutdown, Dominion withdrew its remaining movable assets from the cold plant and handed it over to a
demolition firm, BTU Solutions, on June 26, 2012.
BTU Solutions pledged to demolish the plant over a two-year period, and demolition began in late 2012.
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
{{Generating Stations in Indiana
Energy infrastructure completed in 1929
Energy infrastructure completed in 1955
Energy infrastructure completed in 1962
Coal-fired power stations in Indiana
Hammond, Indiana
Buildings and structures in Lake County, Indiana
1929 establishments in Indiana
2012 disestablishments in Indiana
Demolished power stations in the United States
Former coal-fired power stations in the United States