Nanticoke Generating Station
Encyclopedia
The Nanticoke Generating Station is the largest coal-fired power plant
in North America, delivering up to 2,760 MW of power
into the southern Ontario
power grid
from its base in Nanticoke
, Ontario, Canada
. Previous to unit shutdowns, its generating capacity was 3,964 MW. It is owned by Ontario Power Generation
, a crown corporation of the Government of Ontario
. It was scheduled for decommission in early 2009 as part of the Ontario commitment to eliminate coal power
, but this has been repeatedly delayed. The plant has shut down four of its eight units, and is currently scheduled to phase out its use of coal by 2014, switching to biomass
or natural gas
. Nanticoke is one of Canada's top ten single sources of greenhouse gases.
volunteer militia routed a band of American marauders who had been pillaging area farms and terrorizing the country, an exploit that inspired the British military forces and the people of Upper Canada
during the War of 1812
. The site was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1924.
Ontario Hydro
revealed plans to build a 4,000MW
fossil-fuel generating station near Long Point, Ontario in 1967. Its current site was selected in Nanticoke, Ontario, because of the nearby harbour, the proximity of United States
coal supplies, and proximity to much of Ontario's population. The construction of the plant cost CAN$
800 million and operations started in 1972. Eight pulverized coal-fired steam generators were built in phases between 1973 and 1978.
By 1981, the plant was consuming 35,000 tonnes of coal per day. Over the years, another $900 million has been invested in making the plant more energy efficient
, robust, and improving its emissions.
and one of the ten largest in the world. The station's annual production is in the range of 20 to 24 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), enough electricity to run nearly 2.5 million households. When demand for electricity is high, all eight units are put into service and it produces approximately 15% of Ontario's electricity needs by itself. Nanticoke currently employs approximately 500 staff from the area.
A dock on the shore of the site allows ships to deliver coal to an on-site stock pile, which can hold up to 4.5 megatonnes.
Cooling water for the plant is drawn from Lake Erie
using two pipes that are 6.5m in diameter
, stretch 550m offshore, and sit 10m below the surface. The plant has two multi-flue smokestacks which are both 198 m (650 ft) tall.
The plant is connected to the power grid by numerous 230,000 and 500,000 volt
transmission lines
.
emitters and polluters. In 2001, it was the largest single source of greenhouse gases according to Environment Canada
. Due to a major reduction in output in 2009, it had been surpassed by facilities in Alberta
and Saskatchewan
, but remained in the top 10 representing almost 2.5% of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions.
*Calculated figures for CO2e are rounded to the nearest tonne.
by refurbishing its existing fleet, and building two additional reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station
. Bruce Power
, Canada's only private nuclear power company, also proposed building two reactors on former Stelco
lands in Nanticoke. However, this was met with immediate opposition and dismissal from the government. "It's a speculative move on the part of a private company...It doesn't enjoy the support, encouragement [or] approval...of the Government of Ontario," stated George Smitherman
, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure.
Currently, a regulation under the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) stipulates that coal will not be used in Ontario to generate electricity past December 31, 2014. Nanticoke is scheduled to phase out its use of coal and switch to using biomass
. While this substitution will result in lower net greenhouse gas emissions, it will also result in lower electricity generation. Premier
Dalton McGuinty
announced 2500 MW of green energy projects in April 2010. These projects will help Ontario move towards greener electricity production, and help compensate for the decreased generation at Nanticoke, keeping it on track towards the current scheduled phase-out date of 2014.
Two units at Nanticoke were shut down in fall 2010. Another two will be shut down in 2011.
Fossil fuel power plant
A fossil-fuel power station is a power station that burns fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas or petroleum to produce electricity. Central station fossil-fuel power plants are designed on a large scale for continuous operation...
in North America, delivering up to 2,760 MW of power
Electric power
Electric power is the rate at which electric energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt.-Circuits:Electric power, like mechanical power, is represented by the letter P in electrical equations...
into the southern Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
power grid
Electric power transmission
Electric-power transmission is the bulk transfer of electrical energy, from generating power plants to Electrical substations located near demand centers...
from its base in Nanticoke
Nanticoke, Ontario
Nanticoke is an unincorporated community and former city located on the western border of Haldimand County, Ontario, Canada. It is southeast of Simcoe in neighbouring Norfolk County and south of Brantford...
, Ontario, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Previous to unit shutdowns, its generating capacity was 3,964 MW. It is owned by Ontario Power Generation
Ontario Power Generation
Ontario Power Generation is a public company wholly owned by the Government of Ontario. OPG is responsible for approximately 70% of the electricity generation in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Sources of electricity include nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, and fossil fuel...
, a crown corporation of the Government of Ontario
Government of Ontario
The Government of Ontario refers to the provincial government of the province of Ontario, Canada. Its powers and structure are set out in the Constitution Act, 1867....
. It was scheduled for decommission in early 2009 as part of the Ontario commitment to eliminate coal power
Coal in Canada
Reserves of coal in Canada rank fifth largest in the world at approximately 10 billion tonnes, 4% of the world total. This represents more energy than all of the oil and gas in the country combined. The coal industry generates CDN$5 billion annually...
, but this has been repeatedly delayed. The plant has shut down four of its eight units, and is currently scheduled to phase out its use of coal by 2014, switching to biomass
Biomass
Biomass, as a renewable energy source, is biological material from living, or recently living organisms. As an energy source, biomass can either be used directly, or converted into other energy products such as biofuel....
or natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
. Nanticoke is one of Canada's top ten single sources of greenhouse gases.
History
The Nanticoke Generating Station is built on the site of the "Battle of Nanticoke", where in 1813 the NorfolkNorfolk County, Ontario
Norfolk County is a rural city-status single-tier municipality on the north shore of Lake Erie in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Bloomsburg is a small town located in Norfolk County and is the hometown of David Slater. The county seat and largest community is Simcoe...
volunteer militia routed a band of American marauders who had been pillaging area farms and terrorizing the country, an exploit that inspired the British military forces and the people of Upper Canada
Upper Canada
The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...
during the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
. The site was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1924.
Ontario Hydro
Ontario Hydro
Ontario Hydro was the official name from 1974 of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario which was established in 1906 by the provincial Power Commission Act to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity generated by private companies already operating at Niagara...
revealed plans to build a 4,000MW
Watt
The watt is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units , named after the Scottish engineer James Watt . The unit, defined as one joule per second, measures the rate of energy conversion.-Definition:...
fossil-fuel generating station near Long Point, Ontario in 1967. Its current site was selected in Nanticoke, Ontario, because of the nearby harbour, the proximity of United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
coal supplies, and proximity to much of Ontario's population. The construction of the plant cost CAN$
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
800 million and operations started in 1972. Eight pulverized coal-fired steam generators were built in phases between 1973 and 1978.
By 1981, the plant was consuming 35,000 tonnes of coal per day. Over the years, another $900 million has been invested in making the plant more energy efficient
Efficient energy use
Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the goal of efforts to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a home allows a building to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a comfortable temperature...
, robust, and improving its emissions.
Power generation and distribution
Nanticoke is the largest coal-fired power plant in North AmericaNorth America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and one of the ten largest in the world. The station's annual production is in the range of 20 to 24 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), enough electricity to run nearly 2.5 million households. When demand for electricity is high, all eight units are put into service and it produces approximately 15% of Ontario's electricity needs by itself. Nanticoke currently employs approximately 500 staff from the area.
A dock on the shore of the site allows ships to deliver coal to an on-site stock pile, which can hold up to 4.5 megatonnes.
Cooling water for the plant is drawn from Lake Erie
Lake Erie
Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...
using two pipes that are 6.5m in diameter
Diameter
In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints are on the circle. The diameters are the longest chords of the circle...
, stretch 550m offshore, and sit 10m below the surface. The plant has two multi-flue smokestacks which are both 198 m (650 ft) tall.
The plant is connected to the power grid by numerous 230,000 and 500,000 volt
Volt
The volt is the SI derived unit for electric potential, electric potential difference, and electromotive force. The volt is named in honor of the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta , who invented the voltaic pile, possibly the first chemical battery.- Definition :A single volt is defined as the...
transmission lines
Overhead power line
An overhead power line is an electric power transmission line suspended by towers or utility poles. Since most of the insulation is provided by air, overhead power lines are generally the lowest-cost method of transmission for large quantities of electric energy...
.
Emissions
The Nanticoke station is one of Canada's largest greenhouse gasGreenhouse gas
A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone...
emitters and polluters. In 2001, it was the largest single source of greenhouse gases according to Environment Canada
Environment Canada
Environment Canada , legally incorporated as the Department of the Environment under the Department of the Environment Act Environment Canada (EC) (French: Environnement Canada), legally incorporated as the Department of the Environment under the Department of the Environment Act Environment...
. Due to a major reduction in output in 2009, it had been surpassed by facilities in Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
and Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
, but remained in the top 10 representing almost 2.5% of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions.
| Greenhouse gas | Sum (tonne Tonne The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI... s) |
Sum (tonnes CO2e Carbon dioxide equivalent Carbon dioxide equivalent and Equivalent carbon dioxide are two related but distinct measures for describing how much global warming a given type and amount of greenhouse gas may cause, using the functionally equivalent amount or concentration of carbon dioxide as the reference.- Global warming... *) |
|---|---|---|
| CO2 Carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom... |
6,015,378.0 | 6,015,378.0 |
| CH4 Methane Methane is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is the simplest alkane, the principal component of natural gas, and probably the most abundant organic compound on earth. The relative abundance of methane makes it an attractive fuel... |
810.3 | 17,016.0 |
| N2O Nitrous oxide Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas or sweet air, is a chemical compound with the formula . It is an oxide of nitrogen. At room temperature, it is a colorless non-flammable gas, with a slightly sweet odor and taste. It is used in surgery and dentistry for its anesthetic and analgesic... |
15.3 | 4,743.0 |
| Total | - | 6,037,137.0 |
*Calculated figures for CO2e are rounded to the nearest tonne.
| Year | Emissions (tonnes CO2e) |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 14,715,952 |
| 2005 | 17,629,437 |
| 2006 | 16,271,466 |
| 2007 | 17,887,649 |
| 2008 | 15,427,913 |
| 2009 | 6,037,137 |
Decommissioning
The Government of Ontario had originally targeted to phase out all of its coal plants by 2009, but abandoned this target in 2006 to the ire of organizations representing nurses and physicians, community groups and environment groups. The province could not replace Nanticoke's energy output by the deadline. The province was examining replacing this output using nuclear powerNuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
by refurbishing its existing fleet, and building two additional reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Clarington, Ontario. The facility derives its name from the Township of Darlington, the former name of the municipality in which it is located.The Darlington station is a large...
. Bruce Power
Bruce Power
Bruce Power Limited Partnership is a Canadian business partnership composed of several corporations. It exists as a partnership between Cameco Corporation , TransCanada Corporation , BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust , the Power Workers Union and The Society of Energy Professionals...
, Canada's only private nuclear power company, also proposed building two reactors on former Stelco
Stelco
US Steel Canada is a steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.-History:Several existing smaller steelworks combined and were incorporated as the Steel Company of Canada in 1910. Charles S...
lands in Nanticoke. However, this was met with immediate opposition and dismissal from the government. "It's a speculative move on the part of a private company...It doesn't enjoy the support, encouragement [or] approval...of the Government of Ontario," stated George Smitherman
George Smitherman
George Smitherman is a Canadian politician and broadcaster. He represented the provincial riding of Toronto Centre in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1999 to 2010, when he resigned to contest the mayoralty of Toronto in the 2010 municipal election...
, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure.
Currently, a regulation under the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) stipulates that coal will not be used in Ontario to generate electricity past December 31, 2014. Nanticoke is scheduled to phase out its use of coal and switch to using biomass
Biomass
Biomass, as a renewable energy source, is biological material from living, or recently living organisms. As an energy source, biomass can either be used directly, or converted into other energy products such as biofuel....
. While this substitution will result in lower net greenhouse gas emissions, it will also result in lower electricity generation. Premier
Premier of Ontario
The Premier of Ontario is the first Minister of the Crown for the Canadian province of Ontario. The Premier is appointed as the province's head of government by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, and presides over the Executive council, or Cabinet. The Executive Council Act The Premier of Ontario...
Dalton McGuinty
Dalton McGuinty
Dalton James Patrick McGuinty, Jr., MPP is a Canadian lawyer, politician and, since October 23, 2003, the 24th and current Premier of the Canadian province of Ontario....
announced 2500 MW of green energy projects in April 2010. These projects will help Ontario move towards greener electricity production, and help compensate for the decreased generation at Nanticoke, keeping it on track towards the current scheduled phase-out date of 2014.
Two units at Nanticoke were shut down in fall 2010. Another two will be shut down in 2011.