North Valmy Generating Station is a

coal-fired 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 ...

power station located near

Valmy, Nevada Valmy is a census-designated place in Humboldt County, Nevada, United States, named after the Battle of Valmy in France. The Lone Tree gold-mining complex is located adjacent to I-80; mining ended there in 2007, though a small gold resource rema ...

. The plant is jointly owned by

NV Energy NV Energy is a public utility which generates, transmits and distributes electric service in northern and southern Nevada, including the Las Vegas Valley, and provides natural gas service in the Reno–Sparks metropolitan area of northern Nevada ...

and

Idaho Power Idaho Power Company (IPC) is a regulated Electric utility, electrical power utility. Its business involves the purchase, sale, Electricity generation, generation, Electric power transmission, transmission and electrical distribution industry, dist ...

. Coal is delivered to the location by the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

and originates in

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

and

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the s ...

Description

The North Valmy Generating Station is a coal-fueled, steam-electric generating plant with two operating units. This station can be seen from Highway 80 in Golconda, NV. When It is run at high capacity it burns through over one hundred rail cars of coal per day.

History

Construction was begun in 1979 by

Sierra Pacific Resources NV Energy is a public utility which generates, transmits and distributes electric service in northern and southern Nevada, including the Las Vegas Valley, and provides natural gas service in the Reno–Sparks metropolitan area of northern Nevada. ...

on the plant. The first unit went on line in 1981 and is rated at with a Babcock & Wilcox Boiler and Westinghouse turbine/generator. The second unit followed in 1985 and is rated at with a Foster Wheeler Boiler and General Electric turbine/generator. By 2012, it was anticipated that unit 1 will be taken out of service in 2022 and unit 2 by 2025. The owners plan 600 MW solar with 480 MW storage as partial substitutes, the plan for which was approved in January 2022. The two hybrid solar projects are expected to be completed in 2024.

Notes

{{coor, 40, 52, 50, N, 117, 9, 8, W, display=title Energy infrastructure completed in 1981 Energy infrastructure completed in 1985 Buildings and structures in Humboldt County, Nevada Coal-fired power stations in Nevada Idaho Power