Three new, efficient turbines to provide relatively clean energy have been proposed at New Haven’s Harbor Station power plant. Neighbors and environmentalists have two questions: Where’s the energy going to go? And what’s going to happen to the more polluting generator that’s already there?
They’ll ask these questions regarding the plant, on the city’s east short at 1 Waterfront Street, at a public information hearing on the expansion of Harbor Station Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Annex YMA Club, 554 Woodward Ave.
In 2007, the General Assembly passed a law requiring the state to open more peaking plants — that is, power stations called into service only when energy demand is at its highest, usually on hot, humid summer days.
The state Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) issued a request for proposals. One of three chosen was submitted by New Jersey-based PSEG (Public Service Enterprise Group).
“The plan is to put in highly efficient turbines that can burn either natural gas or ultra-low sulfur fuel oil, the cleanest fuels available right now,” said company spokesman Mike Jennings. “This plant is supposed to operate 2 percent of the time — one, two or three turbines at a time, typically on hot summer days.
Estimates are it will run parts of 40 days or so, with all three turbines producing 130 megawatts, typically enough to power 1,000 homes.
One advantage of the technology, Jennings said, is that once the units are built, at a cost of $140 million, they can be fully operational within ten minutes. Another advantage is that the turbines will reduce emissions from the combustion process of nitrogen oxide by 90 percent and carbon monoxide by 80 to 85 percent.
The company plans to get the turbines online in June 2012. “This would be an addition, not a conversion,” he added. “We’d be building on the existing site. The existing plant that burns low-sulfur fuel oil would continue to operate.”
First the company has to hold a public meeting to explain its plans to local residents. That’s a requirement of the Environmental Justice law the state passed in 2008, in response to the disproportionate impact that power plants and other industrial facilities have on the air, water and soil of their host communities.
Anstress Farwell, representing the New Haven Urban Design League, sent out an email reminding her contacts that in 2003, the Department of Environmental Protection turned down an application to install a “peaking plant” at the English Station site in Fair Haven.
“The DEP found that New Haven’s air quality was poor (it is still rated “F” for failing); that local power production was high, allowing producers to export to Long Island and southeast Connecticut; that this meant that local residents bore the environmental impact for power consumed by other communities; and that exported power was inefficient due to losses during transmission.”
Regarding the new proposal, she wrote, “The consensus of many groups has been to allow expansion [of the Harbor Station plant] only if it resulted in a net improvement in air quality.”
In a phone interview, Farwell said the new proposal in its current form raises issues of clean air, environmental justice and economic development for New Haven, since the company is based out of state. She would like to see the proposal considered in the context of regional planning and what other burdens fall on residents of New Haven. For example, vehicles on I‑95 and I‑91 spew air pollution as they move through the city. So if something could be done to move people out of their cars and into mass transit, that would help reduce air pollution.
She plans to attend the Aug. 4 public meeting. “I would say it’s very unlikely we would support it, but I’d like to hear the whole proposal.”
Roger Smith, campaign director for Clean Water Action in Connecticut, has been in the midst of energy fights since his group spearheaded the long and ultimately successful campaign to clean up the so-called “Sooty Six,” the six most polluting power plants in Connecticut. The Harbor Station plant was one of them.
PSEG spokesman Jennings said that when the company bought the plant in 2002, it changed the oil burned to a cleaner fuel and greatly reduced pollution. The company also bought the Sooty Six coal-burning plant in Bridgeport and turned it into “one of the cleanest coal plants in the country,” Jennings said.
Smith agreed. Even though the company was only conforming to the new law, he said, “Credit where credit is due. It’s still a coal plant at the end of the day [coal is the dirtiest source of power], but it’s a heckuva lot better than it was ten years ago. They’ve reduced mercury and sulfur dioxide. They voluntarily agreed to have mercury controls on their plant.”
“Bottom line is the new plant is an order of magnitude better than what you currently have in New Haven,” he said, referring to the existing Harbor Station plant. “The real question is what are you going to do with the old unit? That’s a fundamental issue. You’re not displacing the dirty power sources.”
Jennings said he did not have information on the difference, in terms of pollution, between the ultra-low sulfur fuel the new generators are slated to burn and the low-sulfur diesel fuel the existing Harbor Station generator is burning. Neither could he say where the power is destined to go, other than to the energy grid to get sent to where it is needed most during peak energy usage. A spokesman for the DPUC said there’s no way to know that unless an energy company reveals any specific contracts it has, which companies are not required to report.
State Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Dennis Schain said the sulfur content of low-sulfur oil is between 500 and 3,000 parts per million (ppm), while the sulfur content of ultra-low sulfur fuel oil is 15 parts per million, resulting in a 97 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions.