Experimental Plant Is Producing More Electricity Than Anticipated

The Cool Water Coal Gasification power plant--the only one in the nation that burns gas derived from coal--just passed its first birthday, and its operators say it is producing 30% to 50% more electricity than expected.

The 100-megawatt experimental plant produces enough power to supply 50,000 residential customers, according to Southern California Edison, one of the project’s six partners. That’s less than 1% of Edison’s power supply of 17,000 megawatts.

The $263-million power plant, located halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the desert town of Daggett, makes synthetic gas by burning coal at temperatures exceeding 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit, high enough to destroy tars and phenols, the harmful pollutants that are normal byproducts of conventional coal-burning. Cool Water’s byproducts, sulfur and a mineral residue from coal called slag, are sold to industrial users.

The California Department of Health Services, which has been monitoring the project, recently declared that none of Cool Water’s wastes are hazardous. “It’s pretty clean,” a Health Services spokesman said.

Despite its technical success, the process is fairly expensive. Edison said Cool Water electricity costs between 10 cents and 11 cents per kilowatt hour, contrasted with the 6 cents per kilowatt hour to produce electricity by burning oil or natural gas.

Edison, however, is paying market rates for the Cool Water electricity. The 4- to 5-cent-per-kilowatt gap between market rates and what it costs to produce Cool Water electricity is covered by a five-year, $120-million U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corp. grant. Cool Water used $9.1 million of the grant money through May to help cover the difference, said Vernon Shorter, a Cool Water spokesman.

There’s some recent evidence that a larger plant would be more economical. The Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the utility industry and a Cool Water partner, concluded that a 500- to 600-megawatt plant would produce energy more cleanly and cheaply than a traditional coal-fired power plant. Edison has the option to buy or dismantle the Cool Water plant when the five-year experiment is over.

Cool Water’s other owners are Texaco, which developed the technology, General Electric, which builds the turbines and electrical generators, Bechtel Power, the engineering firm which designed the plant, and the Japan Cool Water Program Partnership.