Duke Energy Progress (DEP) is seeking approval from the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) to build, at least initially, a large (1,360 megawatt) fossil gas combined cycle plant near its existing coal-fired Roxboro Steam Electric Plant in Person County. This approval is called a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, or CPCN. This proposed plant is part of Duke Energy’s Carbon Plan Integrated Resource Planning process, and you can read our blog series on the 2024 Duke CPIRP here.
In this blog, we will take a look at the existing coal plant, the proposed fossil gas plant, the gas supply pipeline options, and possible alternatives.
What power plants are at the Roxboro site now?
Currently, DEP owns and operates a four-unit, 2,462 megawatt (MW) coal-fired steam turbine electricity generating station in Person County. The plant was built in 1966 on the nearly 7,000 acres DEP owns on Hyco Lake, about 4.5 miles from the Virginia border. The lake was built to serve as a cooling reservoir for the coal plant. It is one of the largest power plants in the United States, but it does not operate at full capacity any longer. The graph below shows how the usage of each of the four units has declined since 2010. In addition, the plant has not been a reliable asset recently. During Winter Storm Elliott, the failure of a coal conveyor belt caused a loss of 685 MW from Units 1 and 2, and Units 3 and 4 also lost 300 MW. Many fossil coal and gas units failed during Winter Storm Elliott, but the Roxboro plant was the largest plant failure in the Duke system.
Also on the DEP property is a large substation with 230 kV transmission lines that carry electricity south further into North Carolina and north into Virginia and into the organized wholesale electricity market called PJM. Of Duke Energy’s transmission assets, 230 kV lines are the second largest in size and capacity (after 500 kV lines).
Woodland Elementary School, discussed more below, is less than 1.5 miles from the emissions stacks of the coal plant. The stacks are visible from the school (see image below).
Source: Googlemaps Streetview (accessed July 15, 2024)
What is Duke proposing?
In the current proceeding, DEP is proposing to retire Units 1 and 4 (the oldest unit and the youngest unit, totaling 1,091 MW and shown as the yellow and red lines in the graph above) and replace them with a 1,360 MW combined cycle gas plant to be built on an adjacent part of DEP’s Hyco Lake property. Duke plans for the gas plant to be completed in late 2028, before the coal units would be retired and dismantled in early 2029. Duke also plans for a second 1,360 combined cycle gas plant to be built to replace Units 2 and 3, with this second plant becoming operational in 2030. However, the second plant is not part of this CPCN application. In addition to gas, the plant could be run on fuel oil. The plant lifetime is estimated to be 35 years (so until 2063).
The estimated cost is confidential right now, but we estimate it would cost around $1.96 billion (source: SACE calculations using the National Renewable Energy Lab’s Annual Technology Baseline).
Will a pipeline be needed?
The fossil gas fuel supply will come from a planned new Dominion/PSNC pipeline called the T15 that will originate from the Williams Transco Interstate Pipeline near the Dan River in Rockingham County. This T15 pipeline is subject to NCUC approval as well, and if approved, the costs of this pipeline will be “assigned” to DEP ratepayers as well, because this pipeline serves only one plant. Cost estimates have not been shared publicly. Currently, Duke does not have an adequate guaranteed supply of gas (called firm transportation, or FT) to meet the needs of its existing resources. In Appendix K of Duke’s CPIRP, the Company notes that it has firm gas supply agreements for less than half of the peak demand (or peak burn) of its existing fleet. The Company states “(A)ny new CC generation will necessitate the need for additional interstate FT to support those units’ burn requirements.” So in addition to the T15, Duke has contracted for additional firm gas supply from both the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate project and from a proposed Williams Transco expansion project called the Transco Southeast Supply Enhancement. Both of these proposed pipeline projects fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and neither of these projects have completed the approval process or started construction.
Source: Joint Testimony of Evan D. Lawrence and Dustin R. Metz, Public Staff of the North Carolina Utilities Commission Docket Nos. E-2, Sub 1318, and EC- 67, Sub 55 (p. 7)
Are gas plants cleaner than coal plants?
Burning fossil gas (also known as methane) to produce electricity emits less carbon dioxide and other air pollutants like mercury than coal, but there are still emissions. Even the most efficient combined cycle plants still emit NOx, SOx, and many other localized pollutants into the air. They emit the most when they are ramping (turning the burning of gas up and down) and when they are running on fuel oil instead of gas.
The estimated emissions from the gas plant are summarized in this table from DEP’s air permit application to the NC Department of Environmental Quality.
Source: https://edocs.deq.nc.gov/AirQuality/DocView.aspx?id=480474&dbid=0&repo=AirQuality
The proposed gas plant site is even closer (approximately 3,776 feet) to Woodland Elementary School, referenced above in the first section. This school serves more than 200 children in kindergarten through 5th grade. Approximately 97% of students at Woodland Elementary qualify for free or reduced lunch, according to the school profile on GreatSchools.org.
Proximity of proposed methane gas plant site and Woodland Elementary School. Source: Google Earth (accessed July 15, 2024). Distance from the proposed combined cycle plant and emissions stacks site to Woodland Elementary School is 3,776 feet.
Did Duke evaluate any clean repowering alternatives, such as solar plus storage and transmission options?
No. According to testimony filed by the Office of Public Staff, “Our investigation did not reveal that the Companies took any other actions to evaluate alternate options other than building Roxboro CC1, and ultimately CC2.” (Testimony of Evan D. Lawrence and Dustin R. Metz filed in Docket No. E-2 Sub 1318 filed on June 24, 2024, p. 28)
Will the Roxboro gas plant meet EPA’s greenhouse gas standard?
Unclear. In April, the EPA finalized rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal plants and new gas plants, including the one DEP has proposed at Roxboro. The EPA regulations would require DEP’s new gas plant at Roxboro to reduce emissions drastically in 2032, just four years after it started operating, or run less than 40% of the time. Duke has indicated that it is currently assuming the plant will be converted to run on 100% hydrogen at that point, which would require retrofits and a source of hydrogen.
SACE will dive a little deeper into the Roxboro gas plant proposal in future posts.
The post Duke Energy’s Proposed Roxboro Gas Plant: A Primer appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Germany Guarantees Offshore Prices, England Wind Surge
Allen covers Germany’s new offshore wind price guarantee, England’s onshore wind revival, wind for Korean chip plants, and Aeris debt trouble.
The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Good Monday everyone.
Last summer … Germany held an auction for new offshore wind capacity. Not a single company bid. Zero. This week Berlin put forward a new law to fix that. The old system asked developers to pay for the right to build in the North Sea and the Baltic. TotalEnergies and BP bid billions of euros … then walked away. So the new plan introduces contracts for difference. Build the farm … and the government backstops the price of electricity. The offshore wind association wants abandoned projects … up to sixteen gigawatts … put back on the auction block under the new rules. That is fifty billion euros worth of wind farms waiting for a second chance. The cabinet vote could come as early as next week.
Stay in Europe but head west. England just posted its highest number of onshore wind applications in a decade. About forty-five proposals. Before Labour lifted the Conservatives’ ban two years ago … applications averaged one megawatt a month. Now they are running at thirty-six megawatts a month. But here is the catch. The average English wind farm has just two turbines. Eight megawatts. In Scotland … the average is nine turbines and fifty-nine megawatts. England is back in the game. It is just playing small.
Now cross the Pacific. South Korea selected Pacifico Energy Korea to develop the Jindo offshore wind cluster. Two-point-one-three gigawatts. That is the second and third phases of a broader three-point-two-gigawatt project off the southern coast. And here is the connection worth noting. The region is also building the Honam Semiconductor Cluster … a major chip fabrication site. Semiconductor fabs need enormous and reliable power. This wind cluster is being positioned as the energy source to feed it. Wind as baseload for chip manufacturing. That is a new kind of offtaker.
Now head to Brazil. Aeris Energy makes wind turbine blades. This week the company told its creditors it needs to restructure again. Roughly three hundred and thirty million dollars in debt. Aeris already restructured last year. But revenue fell forty-eight percent in the first half of this year. The company lost roughly fifty-three million dollars. It tried to find a buyer. No one came forward. Remember TPI Composites filing Chapter Eleven in Houston last year? The independent blade business keeps getting harder.
Back to North America. In Nova Scotia … Port Hawkesbury Paper is spending four hundred and fifty million dollars on thirty-one Nordex turbines. They will be the biggest onshore turbines in North America. Each one … six-point-nine megawatts. And they carry electrothermal technology that prevents ice from forming on the blades. They operate down to minus thirty Celsius. Last January … Nova Scotia’s existing turbines dropped from three hundred and fifty megawatts to seventy-five in a single evening when the cold hit. For anyone building in northern climates … cold-weather performance is no longer optional.
And in Minnesota … Xcel Energy broke ground on two projects this week. A hundred-and-eighty-five-mile transmission line that can carry four thousand megawatts of new wind and solar to the grid. And alongside it … a four-hundred-and-twenty-megawatt natural gas peaking plant in Lyon County for the days when the wind stops.
So what does this week tell us? Germany’s auction reform is the story to watch. If Berlin gets contracts for difference right … sixteen gigawatts of stalled projects could come back to life. England proves that removing a political ban releases demand … but the scale gap with Scotland shows that planning culture matters as much as planning law. The blade supply chain is still under stress. If you are in procurement … know your supplier’s balance sheet. South Korea is tying offshore wind directly to semiconductor manufacturing. That kind of industrial offtaker changes the project finance equation. And from Minnesota to Nova Scotia … the message is the same. Transmission … peaking power … cold-weather reliability. The turbine is the easy part. The system around it is where the money and the risk still live.
And that is the state of the wind industry for the 24th of August 2026.
Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.
The lead story on the long-running CBS show “60 Minutes” tonight proposed to answer how is possible that the rest of the developed world, as well as communist dictatorships like China, offer their citizens and visitors the opportunity to travel around the land speeds of hundreds of miles per hour, where such projects in the U.S. have never gotten close even the feeblest level of success.
They imply that the answer lies mainly in government mismanagement, outrageous over-promises for political purposes, and various forms of malfeasance.
In the process of creating 2GreenEnergy, I coincidentally tripped across a story that explains this far more convincingly.
I happened to interview a very bright and dedicated young man in the Texas state legislature about 20 years ago, who told me that he and his team had done a great deal of research and legal work surrounding connecting Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio with highspeed rail, and had offered their plans to the public for comment.
One of the first comments came in the form of a phone call he received from Herb Kelleher, then-CEO of Southwest Airlines, which operated out of airports in those four cities. He said, “Normally, tickets between any of these cities are priced at $80 each. If you drive your first spike, I’ll reduce that price to $8. Perhaps with free parking. Let’s see how that works out for you.”
What I inferred from the interview I conducted with the young, perhaps naive Texan who was bold enough to propose low-carbon mass transportation to the Lone Star state, was this: money and power talk here, and nothing else matters.
Yet that’s not true elsewhere around the globe.
Had Kelleher publicly taken this position in China and pushed after it, he would have likely been executed by firing squad. While no one wants to see the threat of violence as public policy, we all must admit that the Chinese are quite effective in carrying out their plans, regardless of what those plans might be.
In Europe and the rest of the OECD nations, the situation is, fortunately, far more nuanced and less savage. People are highly educated, and they understand the need for decarbonizing their electric grid and transportation sectors. Having some billionaire jackass strong-arm their culture would not have enjoyed any success there either.
Many things in these parts of the world of the world get done simply because they are right, as mystifying as that seems to us in the U.S.
Today, I met a professional driver for the film-making industry whose principal focus is stunt-work.
Somehow, we got to talking about the many movie stars for whom he’s worked over the years, and how pleasant most of them are to be around.
He started by mentioning Kevin Costner.
“I really like him,” I said. Please tell me he’s not an asshole.”
“Oh no; he’s a prince,” my new friend replied. “I also do the driving for Jay Leno’s show about his massive garage full of vintage cars. He’s even kinder. When we’re having lunch between shootings, he’ll often come up our table and ask if we need another Coke or two. Maybe desserts?”
We eventually got around to the stars who are, in fact, assholes.
“I drive in Lethal Weapon 4,” he began.
“Let me make a stab. Mel Gibson?”
Yes. One of the most hateful, most miserable people you could meet in 100 lifetimes.”
“That’s the rumor everyone’s heard,” I responded. “It’s weird how people who have more money that God feel the need to be such terrible people.”
“Well, my theory is that money doesn’t change people; it only amplifies them.”
I remind him of Henry Ford’s observation above.
Great conversation.
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