Dive Brief:
- EquiPower Resources, a unit of investment firm Energy Capital Partners, announced on Tuesday that it will retire its 1,492-megawatt Brayton Point power plant in Mass. by May 2017.
- The decision to close the plant, which has three coal-fired generating units and one large oil-fired unit, was made due to the high cost of complying with emission rules and the low price point of competing natural gas, Equipower said.
- Equipower sought to keep the plant open in ISO New England's forward capacity market, but they "were not able to obtain approval [...] to participate [...] at price levels that would allow Brayton Point to remain viable," said Curt Morgan, CEO and President of Brayton Point Energy.
Dive Insight:
The retirement of an aging coal plant isn't very surprising, but the move to shut down Brayton Point might be. After all, EquiPower just bought the plant at the end of August, along with two others, from Dominion for $650 million. Clearly, the cost of meeting the coming EPA regulations on existing power plant emissions would simply have been too much for the plant. That and the abundance of less expensive natural gas spelled the end for New England's largest coal plant.