DOE won’t let CenterPoint close its 60-year-old Indiana coal plant. (Bloomberg)
In a Feb. letter recently shared by an Indiana advocacy group, CenterPoint discouraged DOE from renewing an order to keep Unit 2 online at its F.B. Culley coal plant (which represents <1% of the regional grid’s installed capacity). This move would require millions in upgrades and lengthy outages for “an inefficient and increasingly unreliable asset,” CenterPoint wrote.
DOE’s counter: The agency claimed the unit proved essential during this winter’s extreme weather. Last month, DOE extended the order through June 21.
The bigger picture: DOE's push to keep aging coal plants online is running into more utility resistance. But Energy Sec. Chris Wright told a House committee Thursday that these orders are essential to power factories and data centers, blaming grid reliability issues on intermittent renewables.