New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG, formerly Public Service Electric and Gas) says it is on pace to unload all of its substantial non-nuclear generation, leaving it as a wholly nuclear generating company.
In its 2020 earnings statement Feb. 26, CEO Ralph Izzo touted his company’s strategy “to become primarily a regulated utility with contracted generation, comprised of our zero caron nuclear fleet and recent announcement regarding New Jersey offshore wind through out partnership with Orsted North America.” The company announced in August 2020 that it wanted to unload of some 6.75 MW of coal, gas, and solar generation.
The fossil and solar package amounts to some 6.75 GW of nameplate capacity in New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and Maryland. The company said it will shut down it the Bridgeport Unit 3 in Connecticut this year, the last of the company’s coal-fired generating units. A small combustion turbine plant remains in service at the Bridgeport site.
PSEG’s remaining fossil plants are Bergen (1200-MW combined cycle gas plant in New Jersey), Bethlehem (750-MW gas-fired combined cycle plant in New York), Burlington (168-MW combustion turbine in New Jersey), Essex (501-MW combustion turbine plant in New Jersey), Linden (1636-0MW combined cycle gas plant in New Jersey), Kearny (456-MW combustion turbine in New Jersey), Keys Energy Center (761-MW combined cycle plant in Maryland), New Haven (578-MW combustion turbine in Connecticut), and Sewaren (538-MW combustion turbine in New Jersey).
PSEG nuclear fleet consists of the two-unit Salem pressurized water reactor in Lower Alloways Creek, N.J., with the company owning 1,312 MW of the plant’s total nameplate capacity of 2,285, the 1180-MW Hope Creek boiling water reactor on the same site, and 1275 MW of the 2549-MW Peach Bottom boiling water reactor in eastern Pennsylvania.
In his earnings call, Rizzo said his strategy is “to become primarily a regulated utility with contracted generation, comprised of our carbon [free] nuclear fleet and recent announcement regarding New Jersey offshore wind through our partnership with Orsted North America.”
PSEG’s strategic move is an interesting contrast with that of Chicago-base Exelon Corp., which recently said it is splitting off its nation-leading, but economically struggling, nuclear generation into a separate company.
–Kennedy Maize