Duke Energy offers tour of H.F. Lee plant
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on October 21, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
Robbie Jones, maintenance supervisor, describes how portions of the H.F. Lee Plant close before the winter months for maintenance and repairs during a media tour of the facility on Tuesday afternoon.
Duke Energy officials held a media day at Goldsboro's H.F. Lee Power Plant on Tuesday to tout the plant's natural gas capabilities and to speak about a natural gas pipeline that, if built, could run through Northampton, Halifax, Nash, Wilson, Johnston, Sampson, Cumberland and Robeson counties.
This 564-mile proposed pipeline is the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and would cost $5 billion to build. Duke Energy would partner with Piedmont Natural Gas and Dominion Energy to make the pipeline a reality. The companies have already applied for federal permits that would allow them to build the pipeline.
It would shuttle natural gas harvested as a result of fracking in Pennsylvania and West Virginia to North Carolina and Virginia.
Using natural gas for the area's energy supply is cleaner than burning coal, said H.F. Lee Maintenance Supervisor Robbie Jones, because it produces less particulates being put into the air from the plant's stacks.
"There are minuscule things coming from the stack compared to coal," Jones said.
Jones said he did not know what type of gas was currently being used by the plant, as Piedmont Natural Gas supplies natural gas to the plant, and whatever the plant is burning for energy is "whatever is in the pipeline that Piedmont Natural Gas supplies."
The gas-fired stacks have been used by the H.F. Lee Plant since 2012.
Natural gas is also a cheaper source of energy compared to coal.
"It's shale gas being explored in Marcellus (Pa.) and Utica (N.Y.), and there's a lot of pressure to put the prices down and that really translates into low customer costs," said Duke Energy Vice President Swati Daji, who purchases fuel for Duke Energy power plants across six states.
Power plants in North Carolina currently rely on a single natural gas pipeline, causing general fluctuations in energy costs for consumers. If the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is constructed, it creates a more reliable supply of gas and would smooth out costs of energy.
"This power plant has 85 percent capacity factor," Mrs. Daji said of the H.F. Lee Plant. "That means it's running 85 percent of the time. That's because natural gas prices are so low, so we are dispatching this power plant much more."
The H.F. Lee Plant was in a planned "outage" on Tuesday, meaning the plant was only operating certain stacks at certain times so they could all have maintenance work performed on them before the cold snap of winter sets in.