Cardinal Power Plant is a 1.8-gigawatt (1,800 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 south of

Brilliant, Ohio Brilliant is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in eastern Jefferson County, Ohio, Jefferson County, Ohio, United States, along the Ohio River. It was named after the Brilliant Glass factory that once was located in the t ...

in Jefferson County, Ohio. The power plant has three units. Cardinal is co-owned with Unit 1 owned by

American Electric Power American Electric Power (AEP), (railcar reporting mark: AEPX) is a major investor-owned electric utility in the United States, delivering electricity to more than five million customers in 11 states. AEP ranks among the nation's largest gen ...

's (AEP) subsidiary, AEP Generation Resources. Units 2–3 are owned by Buckeye Power, a

utility cooperative A utility cooperative is a type of cooperative that is tasked with the delivery of a public utility such as electricity, water or telecommunications to its members. Profits are either reinvested for infrastructure or distributed to members ...

. It began operations in 1967.

History

Construction of Cardinal started in November 1963. The project was a joint venture of Ohio Power (a forerunner of AEP) and Buckeye Power. Buckeye Power obtained loans from the

Rural Electric Administration The United States Rural Utilities Service (RUS) administers programs that provide infrastructure or infrastructure improvements to rural communities. These include water and waste treatment, electric power, and telecommunications services. it is ...

and financing through Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and the Ohio Company. Cardinal was built adjacent to Ohio Power's Tidd Plant. The plant is named after the State Bird of Ohio, the

cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **'' Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **'' Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, t ...

. Units 1 and 2 began commercial generation in 1967 at a cost of $131 million. Unit 3 began generation in 1977 after six years of construction at a cost of $220 million. In 2017, AEP and Buckeye Power reached an agreement for Buckeye Power to operate all three units at Cardinal.

Environmental mitigation

To further reduce nitrogen oxide () emissions, AEP and Buckeye Power announced in 2001 they would install

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 nitrogen, diatomic nitrogen (), and water (). A reductant, typically ammonia, anhydrous ammonia (), Ammonium hydroxi ...

(SCR) systems to complement their LO-NOx burners at Cardinal. The SCRs would decrease emissions at the plant from 30% to 90%. Between 2005 and 2010, flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) equipment were installed to all three units at Cardinal with Units 1 and 2 costing $300 million to construct. The FGD equipment would reduce sulfur dioxide () emissions by 98%. A year after it was installed, inspectors found severe corrosion in its tank vessel. AEP negotiated a settlement with

Black & Veatch Black & Veatch (BV) is the largest engineering firm in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Founded in 1915 in Kansas City, Missouri it is now headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas It is a global engineering, procurement, construction ( EPC) ...

, the contractor who installed the FGD equipment, to address the corrosion. Instead of constructing a new chimney for Unit 3's FGD system, AEP retrofitted a

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and c ...

to release

waste heat Waste heat is heat that is produced by a machine, or other process that uses energy, as a byproduct of doing work. All such processes give off some waste heat as a fundamental result of the laws of thermodynamics. Waste heat has lower utility ( ...

into the atmosphere. AEP announced in 2015 that its Cardinal unit will be converted into a

natural gas power plant A gas-fired power plant or gas-fired power station or natural gas power plant is a thermal power station which burns natural gas to generate electricity. Natural gas power stations generate almost a quarter of world electricity and a signif ...

by 2030 in order to comply with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. The

Public Utilities Commission of Ohio The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) is the public utilities commission of the U.S. state of Ohio, charged with the regulation of utility service providers such as those of electricity, natural gas, and telecommunications as well as railr ...

(PUCO) approved of the conversion.

Incidents

During construction in June 1965, three workers were killed when a pump casing fell into a well. An explosion killed one worker and injured four in June 1984.

References

External links

{{Commons category, Cardinal Power Station, Cardinal Power Plant
Cardinal Plant Information
Energy infrastructure completed in 1967 Energy infrastructure completed in 1977 Buildings and structures in Jefferson County, Ohio Coal-fired power stations in Ohio

History

Environmental mitigation

Incidents

See also

References

External links