VA Marcellus-Fed Electric Plant Snags “Project of the Year” Award
As we reported in April, the newest member of Dominion’s power generation fleet, the 1,358 megawatt, natural gas-fired Brunswick Power Station (Brunswick County, Virginia) began producing electricity for customers on Monday, April 25 (see Dominion Brunswick NatGas-Fired Plant Begins Electric Generation). The station produces enough electricity to power 325,000 homes. The power plant will eventually be fed by Marcellus Shale gas coming from Dominion’s own $5 billion, 550-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline. But right now it uses at least some Marcellus/Utica gas coming from the Williams Transco pipeline. There is a power generation conference going on in Orlando, FL right now (wish we were there! brutally cold today in Upstate NY). At the conference, awards have been given out by Power Engineering magazine. The Brunswick Power Station has won two prestigious awards: “Best Overall Generation Project of the Year,” and “Best Gas-Fired Project of the Year.” Congrats to Dominion!…
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FirstEnergy, based in Akron, OH, is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. FirstEnergy owns a variety of regulated and non-regulated power generation plants. In November the company announced it wants to sell six power generating plants in PA, four of them natural gas-fired plants (see 
In June Talen Energy announced that one of its coal-burning electric generating plants, located in Montour County, PA, will get an upgrade to burn natural gas in addition to burning coal (see 
Contrary to the assurances of charlatans like Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey who tells us new natural gas pipelines are not needed, New England is once again looking down the throat of potential electricity shortages this winter–if we have another winter like that of 2013/2014. ISO New England Inc. (ISONE), the electrical grid operator in the region, issued a statement last week to say they are implementing a 2016-17 Winter Reliability Program to guard against potential electricity shortages because there’s not enough natural gas in the region to power electric plants if much of that gas is also heating homes and businesses on cold days. According to ISONE, “Electricity supplies should [not a reassuring word] be sufficient to meet consumer demand for electricity in New England this winter.” They then go on to say, “but constraints on the region’s natural gas pipelines could pose a challenge to reliable operations.” In other words, if it gets really cold and snowy, we’re screwed. So, to fend off that screwing, ISONE has devised a program to load up on oil, of all things, and LNG, to help produce electricity if natgas runs short. Don’t say we haven’t repeatedly warned New England that without new pipelines they will not only continue to pay 4x what everyone else pays for electricity, at some point there just won’t be enough fuel sources to produce electricity and sooner or later New England will have brownouts and/or rolling blackouts–because THEY’RE FOOLS and continue to reject safe, reliable natural gas pipelines…
Over the past two months Panda Power Funds has brought online the first two built-from-scratch-to-use-Marcellus-gas electric plants, both in northeast Pennsylvania (see 
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 (indeed the country’s) largest natural gas powered electric generating plant, in Greensville County, VA (see 
In June, Massachusetts-based Clean Energy Future broke ground on their $800 million, 940-megawatt Utica gas-fired electric plant in Lordstown (Trumbull County), OH (see 
It’s a smallish project in Michigan, but it’s important for the Marcellus/Utica nonetheless. Construction is almost complete on a $240 million, 145-megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Holland, MI. The plant will go online in February 2017. At least some of the natural gas that will supply the plant will come from the Marcellus/Utica, according to an official. When the plant goes online, it will provide around two-thirds of the electricity used in Holland. From one small power plant. Don’t you just love clean-burning, home-grown energy?…
Turns out anti-fossil fuel protesters, behaving like the petulant children they are, couldn’t stop the adults in the room last night in Philadelphia. You may recall we told you yesterday that wackos from a fringe-left group called 350 Philadelphia threatened to “swarm” a meeting of SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) where a vote was scheduled on a plan to build a Marcellus gas-powered electric plant that would provide electricity to SEPTA’s northern Regional Rail lines (see 
In true environmental Nazi fashion, a group of profoundly stupid people have pledged to “swarm” and shut down a SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) meeting where a vote will be taken to build a Marcellus gas-powered electric plant that would provide electricity to SEPTA’s northern Regional Rail lines–a win/win for all Pennsylvanians. The reason the enviro Nazis want to shut down the meeting is to stop the vote because the clean-burning plant would burn a “fossil fuel” and these poor, lost souls grew up watching Captain Planet cartoons and believe burning natgas will toast Mom Earth. That is, they were brainwashed children who grew up to be maladjusted adults…
Last week a plan to build a $550 million natural gas-fired electric generating plant in the city of Bridgeport, CT was approved by city zoning officials. PSEG Power Connecticut currently operates a coal-fired plant in the same location and wants to build a 485-megawatt facility at the same address. The only remaining obstacle is an air permit from CT environmental protection officials, which is expected to be issued early next year. Once the air permit is in hand, PSEG plans to begin construction. Our question is, with no extra pipeline capacity serving New England, where will they get the gas to power the plant?…
In January 2014, MDN brought you the story that due to incessant nagging from the NJ Sierra Club and the NJ League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters the Pinelands Commission, which oversees a stand of scrub pines in South Jersey, nixed a plan for a new natural gas pipeline to bring cheap, clean, abundant Marcellus Shale natural gas to South Jersey for use by residents and to feed an electric plant a local utility wants to convert from burning coal to natgas (see 
MDN first told you about IMG Midstream in August 2014 (see