The Trenton Channel Power Plant, also known as the Trenton Stacks, was a coal-burning power station located in Trenton,

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

. Completed in 1924, it is owned by

Detroit Edison DTE Electric Company (formerly The Detroit Edison Company) was founded in 1886. DTE Electric's power generation portfolio includes renewable energy, but is primarily generated by fossil fuels. In 2021, 67.32% of electricity generated by DTE came ...

, a subsidiary of

DTE Energy DTE Energy (formerly Detroit Edison until 1996) is a Detroit-based diversified energy company involved in the development and management of energy-related businesses and services in the United States and Canada. Its operating units include an elec ...

Location

Part of the facility's property is on the mainland surrounding West Jefferson Avenue in southern Wayne County. The main building – the two-

smokestack A chimney is an architectural ventilation structure made of masonry, clay or metal that isolates hot toxic exhaust gases or smoke produced by a boiler, stove, furnace, incinerator, or fireplace from human living areas. Chimneys are typic ...

power station – and the coal yard are located on what is now technically the southern portion of Slocum's Island in the

Detroit River The Detroit River flows west and south for from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie as a strait in the Great Lakes system. The river divides the metropolitan areas of Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, Windsor, Ontario—an area collectively refe ...

. The facility shares this island with Elizabeth Park, which is separated from the facility by Grosse Ile Parkway. The Trenton Channel Power Station and the affiliated Sibley Quarry occupy of land along the Detroit River, in which of that property is open fields, woods, ponds, and sound

berm A berm is a level space, shelf, or raised barrier (usually made of compacted soil) separating areas in a vertical way, especially partway up a long slope. It can serve as a terrace road, track, path, a fortification line, a border/ separation ...

Environment

The characteristic striped smokestacks were constructed with an innovative “smokestack within a smokestack” design to reduce the level of pollutants released. However, to better achieve this, the inner smokestacks were lined with

asbestos Asbestos () is a naturally occurring fibrous silicate mineral. There are six types, all of which are composed of long and thin fibrous crystals, each fibre being composed of many microscopic "fibrils" that can be released into the atmosphere b ...

that had to be later removed at great cost. The Trenton Channel Power Plant became

ISO 14001 ISO 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land); (b ...

certified in 2001. The plant also donated money for a wildlife observation deck in the

Humbug Marsh Humbug Marsh, a wetland in southeastern Wayne County, Michigan, is a constituent element of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. It is listed as a Ramsar wetland of international importance. Although Humbug Marsh is located within he ...

. DTE Energy spreads crushed limestone along the banks of the Detroit River on Slocum's Island, because such an item provides a popular nesting habitat for native

common tern The common tern (''Sterna hirundo'') is a seabird in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar distribution, its four subspecies breeding in temperate and subarctic regions of Europe, Asia and North America. It is strongly migratory ...

s. Common terns were once plentiful in the region before industrialism drove out all but a small number of them. The banks of the Detroit River near the Trenton Channel Power Plant are one of the only places in the region where common terns regularly nest and breed. Other birds, such as

bald eagle The bald eagle (''Haliaeetus leucocephalus'') is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (''Haliaeetus albicilla''), which occupies the same niche as ...

peregrine falcon The peregrine falcon (''Falco peregrinus''), also known as the peregrine, and historically as the duck hawk in North America, is a Cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan bird of prey (Bird of prey, raptor) in the family (biology), family Falco ...

s, and

great blue heron The great blue heron (''Ardea herodias'') is a large wading bird in the heron family Ardeidae, common near the shores of open water and in wetlands over most of North America and Central America, as well as the Caribbean and the Galápagos ...

s also use the grounds for habitat.

History

The Trenton Channel Power Plant was first fired up in 1924. It had 6 turbine generators with 13 coal-fired boilers. There was space for 2 additional boilers, but they were never needed. Operating conditions were and . The sixth and last turbine generator arrived by 1929. Each unit produced a rated 50 megawatts of electricity. Five short smoke stacks exhausted gases from the boilers. These were the first Detroit Edison units to use pulverized coal rather than the older style stoker-fired beds of coal. They were also the first power plants in the US to use

electrostatic precipitators An electrostatic precipitator (ESP) is a filterless device that removes fine particles, like dust and smoke, from a flowing gas using the force of an induced electrostatic charge minimally impeding the flow of gases through the unit. In con ...

to capture

fly ash Fly ash, flue ash, coal ash, or pulverised fuel ash (in the UK) plurale tantum: coal combustion residuals (CCRs)is a coal combustion product that is composed of the particulates (fine particles of burned fuel) that are driven out of coal-fired ...

from the stacks. Electrostatic precipitators were, however, in use in other industries at the time. In 1950, a second plant started up at the same site and adjoined the first plant. It had two turbine generators, #7 and #8, with a rating of 120 megawatts each. They were fed by a total of 4 boilers. The boilers ran at higher steam conditions than the first plant, at and about . Therefore, the first plant became known as the "low side", while the newer plant was known as the "high side". The high side was located to the south of the low side. Two short smoke stacks released gases from the four boilers. Finally in 1968, Unit #9 was placed in service. It is a 550-megawatt turbine generator fed by a single boiler. It adjoins the high side plant and is located on the south side. Operating conditions are and . One smoke stack is used for this unit. Soon afterwards, another stack, identical to the #9 stack, was erected to replace the two short stacks on the high side plant. Both tall stacks remained in service as of 2012.

Decommissioning

By the mid-1970s, the low side plant was decommissioned and the boiler house was eventually demolished. In the 2010s, all generators except #9 were closed. In 2016, DTE announced its intention to close the plant as well as the

St. Clair Power Plant The Saint Clair Power Plant was a major coal- and oil-fired power plant owned by DTE Electric, a subsidiary of DTE Energy. It was located in St. Clair County, Michigan, on the west bank of St. Clair River. The plant was across M-29 from th ...

by 2022 as it began to change to

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 ...

and

renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...

plants. The retirement of the Trenton and St. Clair plants began in the summer of 2022 and ended that December.

References

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External links