New NatGas-Fired Electric Plant Proposed for Chesapeake, VA
Macquarie Infrastructure has filed an application to build a new natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Chesapeake, Virginia, the state’s third most populous city, located near Norfolk. The facility, called Matex Virginia Power, would produce 1,400 megawatts of electricity by using three gas combustion turbines and one steam turbine. It’s not (yet) known how the new plant will get its gas, although Dominion’s planned $5 billion, 550-mile long Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project is scheduled to have a branch going to Chesapeake. It’s not much of a stretch to think that ACP will feed this new plant, bringing Marcellus/Utica gas from the north to the plant. Here’s the good news, followed by reaction from environmental Nazis that oppose it…
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In June 2014 MDN broke the news that Moxie Energy was in the hunt to begin a third new Marcellus gas-powered electric plant project in Pennsylvania, near Wilkes-Barre (see 
There is precisely one main reason why the United States produces 40% less carbon dioxide now than it did five years ago. Must be the onslaught of solar, right? Nope. How about wind. Yeah, wind power is coming on strong–I see those ugly windmills all over the place now. Must be wind power, right? Nope. Hydro? Nope. Biomass? Nope. There is only one main reason why we pump less CO2 into the atmosphere (if you care about that sort of thing), and it’s this: because fracked shale gas has replaced coal in electric generating plants. You would think environmentalists would celebrate. They don’t and they won’t, pointing out their uber-hypocrisy…
A quick tutorial on the U.S. electric grid system. At a very basic level, the electric grid in our country is made up of RTOs (regional transmission organizations) and ISOs (independent system operators). Each RTO or ISO covers a single state (ISO) or multiple states (RTO). Electric generation is shifted around to meet demands in each region, overseen by whichever regional authority is in charge. For much of the Marcellus/Utica region, the electric organization in charge is the RTO called PJM (lots of acronyms!) PJM Interconnection covers all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. There has been a flurry of new natgas-fired electric plants announced over the past six months or so. The question being asked by industry analysts and bankers (who back such projects) is this: Are we building too many new electric plants, particularly in the Marcellus/Utica?…
In March 2015, Dominion–a huge natural gas and electric utility as well as a midstream company–announced plans to build the State of Virginia’s largest natural gas powered electric generating plant, in Greensville County, VA (see 
In September 2015, MDN told you that the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Utilities (DPU) approved long-term contracts for three utilities–Berkshire Gas, National Grid and Columbia Gas–to buy natural gas supplies from Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline, IF it gets built (see 
In April 2014 MDN brought you the exciting news that a father and son team, Andrew and Matthew Dorn (based in Buffalo, NY) would build a 549-megawatt electric generating plant, powered by Marcellus Shale, in Moundsville (Marshall County), WV (see 
Black & Veatch, a ginormous engineering, consulting and construction company, recently released their “2016 Strategic Directions: Electric Industry Report” (full copy below). The report captures Black & Veatch’s global engineering and thought leadership to examine how distributed electric generation, the low price of natural gas and modern customer information systems represent growth opportunities for the electric industry–even as security concerns are on the rise and legacy power generation sources (i.e. coal powered plants) are fading away, being replaced by new natgas technology. One trend MDN editor Jim Willis did not foresee when he started writing about the Marcellus industry back in January 2009 was the rise of natgas-fired electric generating plants–and the critically important role they would play in the Marcellus/Utica region. This B&V report provides useful insights into how natgas and electric generation are increasing “joined at the hip”…
In July MDN reported that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved Eastern Shore Natural Gas’ (ESNG) System Reliability Project (see 
Indisputable fact #1: With the increased use of natural gas to generate electricity, the air is getting cleaner. That has been proven by both private and government studies. Indisputable fact #2: With the increased use of natural gas to generate electricity, less carbon dioxide is emitted (for those who believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming). If you’re a warmer, you ought to love natgas use in electric plants for those two reasons alone. However, so twisted is the thinking of radical anti-fossil fuelers, they can’t bring themselves to endorse natural gas because it’s an evil, hated, awful fossil fuel. And so otherwise smart people become idiots–like those who belong to Pennsylvanians Against Fracking (PAF). The PAF gang is harassing the state Dept. of Environment Protection because the DEP has approved either the conversion of coal to natgas, or the building of new natgas power plants some 42 times since January 2014. The PAF gang are smart enough to realize more natgas-fired power plants leads to more drilling (and fracking) and their irrational philosophy dictates they must oppose it…
