Dave Solomon at the Union-Leader talked to the new owners of New Hampshire’s two coal-fired power plants (or three, depending on how you count the twin Schiller plants in Portsmouth) and says they’re going to keep running because they make enough money running at peak times and getting extra “capacity” payments to be available if power shortages hit:
Granite Shore bought the power plants from Eversource (in 2016). … The terms of the sale, dictated by the divestiture agreement with the state, require that the new owners continue to operate the properties as power plants for at least 18 months after the closing.
At the time of the sale there was speculation that, facing the cost of growing environmental regulation on coal power, Granite Shore would operate the plants for 18 months as the contract required, and then begin making some changes.
That 18-month period will expire at the end of June, but the plants will continue to operate as needed well beyond that date, according to Andrews.
You can read his whole story here.
Note, however, that coal plants are not a magic always-reliable fallback: More than 7 gigawatts (!!!) of them went offline during the January polar vortex for various reasons, reports Greentech Media.
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