The Robert W. Scherer Power Plant (also known as Plant Scherer) is a

coal-fired 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 ...

Juliette, Georgia Juliette is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Monroe County, Georgia, United States. The community is part of the Macon Metropolitan Statistical Area. Named for Juliette McCracken, daughter of a railroad engineer, ...

, just north of Macon, Georgia, in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. The plant has four generating units, each capable of producing 930

megawatt 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 Jame ...

s, and is the most powerful coal-fired plant in North America. The plant is named after the former chairman and chief executive officer of

Georgia Power Georgia Power is an electric utility headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was established as the Georgia Railway and Power Company and began operations in 1902 running streetcars in Atlanta as a successor to the Atlanta Consol ...

Description

Each generating unit has a rated capacity of 945 megawatts, but produces 880 MW. The first unit was brought online in 1982. Additional units were brought online in 1984, 1987, and 1989. It has two chimney stacks, one built in 1982 and the second in 1986. Based on data , Plant Scherer is the fourth-largest electric generating plant in the United States, the largest to be fueled exclusively by coal, and the number one emitter of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S., at over per year. The plant's location is along the flight path of many commercial airline flights using Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, and is a prominent feature on the landscape, easily visible during daylight flights. It was announced in June 2020 that Scherer will shut down Unit 4 by 2022 under an agreement reached by

Florida Power & Light Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), the principal subsidiary of NextEra Energy Inc. (formerly FPL Group, Inc.), is the largest power utility in Florida. It is a Juno Beach, Florida-based power utility company serving roughly 5 million custome ...

and the Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA). In November 2021, Georgia Power announced that Unit 3 would also close, this time by year 2025.

Operator and ownership

The plant is operated by

, a subsidiary of the

Southern Company Southern Company is an American gas and electric utility holding company based in the southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is the second largest ...

, along with

Oglethorpe Power Corporation Oglethorpe Power Corporation is a medium-sized electric utility in Georgia, United States. Formed in 1974, Oglethorpe is a not-for-profit cooperative owned by the 38 electric membership corporations that it serves. The utility's headquarters are in ...

, the city of

Dalton, Georgia Dalton is a city and the county seat of Whitfield County, Georgia, United States. It is also the principal city of the Dalton Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Murray and Whitfield counties. As of the 2010 census, the c ...

;

NextEra Energy NextEra Energy, Inc. is an American energy company with about 58 GW of generating capacity (24 GW of which were from fossil fuel sources), revenues of over $18 billion in 2020, and about 14,900 employees throughout the US and Canada. It is the ...

(through subsidiary

); JEA of

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...

; and the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia.

Coal trains

The coal used at the Scherer plant comes from Wyoming's

Powder River Basin The Powder River Basin is a geologic structural basin in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about east to west and north to south, known for its extensive coal reserves. The former hunting grounds of the Oglala Lakota, the area is very ...

, and is delivered by

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31, ...

to the plant by

BNSF BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes tha ...

unit trains of up to 135 cars. Currently, at least two and as many as five trains a day are unloaded at Plant Scherer. The trains use a hydraulic dump system and are unloaded from the bottom of the cars while passing over the unloading trestle. They do not stop while unloading, and are usually unloaded in around 90 minutes. Train ID numbers are usually NS 732-739. Trains get on Memphis District via BNSF and on Atlanta District in Chattanooga.

Emissions

As of August 2012, Plant Scherer is under Georgia EPD investigation for coal ash pond leeching / drinking water contamination and air pollution / air quality. According to '' Natural History'' magazine, Plant Scherer is the largest single point-source for

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is t ...

emissions in the United States. It was also ranked 20th in the world in terms of carbon dioxide emissions by the

Center for Global Development The Center for Global Development (CGD) is a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., and London that focuses on international development. History It was founded in November 2001 by former senior U.S. official Edward W. Scott, direc ...

on its list of global power plants in November 2007. It was the only power plant in the United States that was listed in the world's top 25 carbon dioxide producers.

Regulatory policies and institutions

Since 2009 Lisa Jackson, Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed controversial rules and regulations which include the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology rule and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. Under CSAPR, non-complying plants like Scherer had only less than six months to implement required changes. In 2011 Southern Company awarded

KBR KBR can stand for: * KBR (company), formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root, US * KBR (news agency), an Indonesian radio news agency * KBR Park, Hyderabad, India * Kafa language, spoken in Ethiopia * Key-based routing in computer networking * Potassium brom ...

the contract for the installation of Plant Scherer's environmental compliance equipment, which included installation of

flue-gas desulfurization Flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) is a set of technologies used to remove sulfur dioxide () from exhaust flue gases of fossil-fuel power plants, and from the emissions of other sulfur oxide emitting processes such as waste incineration. Methods ...

and

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 ...

equipment, related ductwork, and auxiliaries at two coal-fired units. As of 2010, KBR, Haliburton and other contractors had constructed two additional tall smoke stacks.

Notes

References

External links

* http://www.skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?b5480 * *
Data on generation and fuel consumption
from the

Energy Information Administration The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and publ ...

Electricity Data Browser {{Supertall chimneys Towers completed in 1982 Towers completed in 1986 Towers in Georgia (U.S. state) Buildings and structures in Monroe County, Georgia Coal-fired power stations in Georgia (U.S. state) Chimneys in the United States Georgia Power NextEra Energy 1982 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) Oglethorpe Power