After 50 years of service, the Tennessee Valley Authority has closed the final unit of what was once the largest coal-fired electric generating station in the U.S. The giant, federally-owned public power system shut down the 1150-MW Paradise unit 3 on Feb. 1, after shuttering the 740-MW units 1 and 2, commissioned in 1963, shut down in 2017.
Retired TVA plant operator Jim Chappell, who was part of the team that fired up Paradise 3 in 1970, symbolically took the plant offline this month. TVA made the decision a year ago to take the plant out of service, as the power system has been closing major portions of what was once the largest consumer of coal in the nation. Paradise was a victim of economic forces – cheap natural gas and lagging demand for electricity – that has seen the shutdown of coal-fired power plants across the country.
TVA spokesman Jim Hobson said, “TVA has already shut down a majority of the 59 coal-fired units it once operated, cutting the share of its power generated by burning coal from nearly two-thirds of TVA’s generation in the 1980s to 17% of TVA’s generation in fiscal 2019.” TVA has nine coal-fired units still in service.
Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and President Donald Trump tried to pressure TVA to keep the plant running. Trump, tweeter-in-chief, tweeted at the time of the 2019 announcement of the closure, “Coal is an important part of our electricity generation mix and @TVAnews should give serious consideration to all factors before voting to close viable power plants, like Paradise#3 in Kentucky.”
Trump’s campaign to keep coal plants operating, and his push to ease environmental regulations on coal plant, has proven to be feckless jawboning. Coal-fired electricity in the U.S. continues to decline (while international sales of metallurgical coal for steel-making are holding up).
TVA, as is the case for many U.S. electric generators, have focused on cheap, abundant natural gas for making power. As POWER magazine noted, “TVA invested about $1 billion to build a 1025-MW combined cycle natural gas plant…next to the coal plant….”
A key to the Paradise project was a large, mine-mouth coal strip mine, originally developed by Peabody Energy, which supplied the units with low-cost fuel, along the Green River in western Kentucky (eastern Kentucky features underground coal mines). The mine was the inspiration for singer-songwriter John Prine’s 1971 autobiographical “Paradise.”
“When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born.
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.
“And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay.
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.
“Well, sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River,
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill.
Where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols.
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.”
— Kennedy Maize