The northern United States experienced the first signs of fall last week as temperatures dropped across the region. This is usually the season when power plants are stockpiling coal in preparation for higher electricity demand during the winter months. But as Wyoming Public Radio’s Stephanie Joyce reports for Inside Energy, this year, that’s proving problematic.
The tall, red smokestacks of the Comanche power plant outside of Pueblo, Colorado are visible from miles away. The plant supplies power to communities along the Front Range, including Denver, and consumes hundreds of tons coal an hour in the process. That coal arrives in mile-long trains from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin and is stockpiled at the plant.
“And that pile will be… oh… a hundred feet fall at its normal operating height.”
That’s Craig Romer. He manages the fuel supply for Xcel Energy, one of the nation’s largest utilities and the owner of the Comanche plant. (PLANT AMBI HERE…) But when I visited the plant recently, the stockpile was nowhere close to ten stories tall.
Standup (:14s) “From where I’m standing, it’s barely three stories. It doesn’t reach anywhere close to the top of the wind barriers set up around it.There is a coal train sitting here on the tracks right outside of the plant, but it looks like it’s empty.”
Romer1 (:05s) “You’d usually like to see about twice the amount of coal than what we have on the ground right now.”
But Romer says coal trains haven’t been making as many deliveries as usual to the plant in recent months. Oil development is booming in the northern Rockies and Dakotas, but there aren’t enough pipelines to move it all. So, it’s being loaded onto hundreds of thousands of rail cars instead.
Romer2 (:14s) “We’re competing for the same rails as that new traffic is competing for.”
Add in two years of bumper crops of grain in the Midwest and an exceptionally cold winter last year and Romer says the only way for the railroads to avoid a slow-motion traffic jam of epic proportions is to keep some trains off the tracks.
Romer3 (:04s)“Five o’clock, if you put more cars on the road, then nobody moves anywheres.”
But that means some of the coal bound for Xcel’s plants, not only in Colorado, but in Minnesota and Texas, isn’t making it there. Romer estimates stockpiles for all of Xcel’s coal-powered plants are at 60 percent of where he would like them to be.
Romer 4 (:07s) “The industry as a whole, the utility industry, is being impacted from the lack of deliveries.”
BNSF is the railroad that’s had the most problems with delays. The company declined to be interviewed, but spokesman Matt Jones said in an emailed statement that BNSF is investing $5 billion in improvements to its network this year, along with adding additional locomotives and personnel. Paul Gutierrez, a lobbyist for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, says all of that is helping, but that for some member plants, it’s not enough.
Gutierrez1 (:10s) “They’ve been trying to catch up because it has been a cool summer and they haven’t had as much demand for electricity. But it’s still not at the level where they should be.”
Minnesota Power announced last week that it was idling units at two plants in response to delayed coal deliveries. A number of other utilities have taken steps to avoid having to do the same. Gutierrez says several of his member plants are among those.
Gutierrez2 (:12s) “Dairyland, Sunflower, both of those facilities actually went into conservation mode to make sure that they had enough coal on hand to prevent a rolling blackout.”
Those plants are in Wisconsin and Kansas respectively. Gutierrez says last winter Dairyland had to truck in coal to avoid shutting down. That came with a hefty price tag, since the transportation costs for trucking are much higher than transporting it by rail.
Gutierrez3 (:08s) “Ultimately those costs are born by our members who can least afford to have their electric rates go up.”
But Gutierrez says even at a high price, the solution was better than the alternative.
Gutierrez4 (:14s)
“Gutierrez: Just imagine a milk plant, if they didn’t have power, the amount of milk that would be wasted, that would have to be spilled, because it would spoil.
Joyce: That sounds like an extremely smelly problem. I hope that does not happen.”
Gutierrez: I hope it doesn’t happen either.
But with grain still waiting to be delivered from last year and oil production only increasing, the railroads predict the delays could last through 2015.
