Dominion Energy Virginia is set to shut down the 1,032-MW coal-fired Chesterfield plant and the remaining 792-MW oil-fired unit at its Yorktown plant on May 31.
Chesterfield units 5 and 6 and Yorktown unit 3 are scheduled for decommissioning, Dominion spokesperson Jeremy Slayton confirmed.
Dominion Energy Virginia, the primary subsidiary of Dominion Energy Inc., filed its integrated resource plan with regulators in Virginia and North Carolina on May 1. The utility, known legally as Virginia Electric and Power Co., did not forecast any generation retirements over the 15-year planning period beginning in 2024 but said it would move forward with retiring the Chesterfield units and Yorktown, located in York County, Va.
In March 2019, Dominion shut down Chesterfield units 3 and 4 as part of more than 2,000 MW of fossil fuel retirements tied to its transition to cleaner energy resources.
Units 7 and 8 at the Chesterfield CC site in Chesterfield County, Va., which are fueled by natural gas, will remain in service, Slayton said.
"Chesterfield Units 7 and 8 are low-cost, low-emission generating resources that continue to play an important grid reliability role," Slayton said in a May 31 email.
While companies have explored the reuse of brownfield sites for renewables and storage development, including converting fossil units to run on cleaner energy sources, Slayton said there are "no immediate plans to repower the retired Chesterfield 5 and 6 and Yorktown 3 units, but Dominion Energy is always evaluating opportunities to repurpose existing retired units with low cost and low emission generation."
Dominion purchased more than 450,000 short tons of coal in 2022 from mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia owned by Consol Energy Inc. and ACNR Holdings Inc. for the Chesterfield plant, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.
Chesterfield units 5 and 6 began operating in 1964 and 1969, respectively. The Yorktown plant has been operating since 1974. Two smaller coal-fired plants at the Yorktown site that had operated since the mid-1950s were retired in 2019.
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