The agency that oversees the electric grid for 13 states — including Pennsylvania — has stated that the premature retirement of FirstEnergy’s nuclear fleet won’t jeopardize the reliability of its transmission system, a statement that isn’t sitting well with the company.
Don Moul, the president and chief nuclear officer of FirstEnergy Solutions, issued a statement Wednesday saying there will be a gap in the transmission system if the company’s three nuclear power plants go offline.
PJM Interconnection — the agency that manages the electric grid — will have to upgrade its distribution system to cope with the loss of the nuclear plants, and “those remediation costs will be passed along to Ohio and Pennsylvania consumers in the form of higher electricity bills,” Moul said.
He said the company’s two nuclear power plants in Ohio provide 14 percent of that state’s overall generation capacity, and the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport provides 7 percent of Pennsylvania’s overall generation capacity.
"PJM's reliability finding was not a surprise, but it was a disappointment,” Moul said. “The results of the PJM reliability study highlight that their review ignores the value that these units offer the grid in terms of fuel diversity and zero-carbon emissions generation.”
As he has done several times previously, Moul called on federal and state legislators to enact policies or subsidies that could “enable our plants to continue to play their critical role” in the regional electric grid.
“When calculating the cost of operating relief for our units, we ask policymakers to do all the math,” Moul said. “Factor in the value of zero-carbon emissions for so great a portion of Ohio and Pennsylvania's generation needs, factor in the contributions that our facilities and their employees make to local and regional economies, and factor in the cost of the PJM upgrades that consumers must bear if our capacity is retired.”
Despite PJM’s report, the agency did announce it is undertaking a study that will analyze “fuel security vulnerabilities” in the grid. The agency will also consider “allowing for proper valuation” for certain power generating assets like nuclear plants that are struggling to compete against cheap, abundant natural gas.
That study appears to be too little and too late for FirstEnergy. Moul said it will only be a year before the company begins facing decisions on whether to refuel its nuclear fleet or permanently shut them down.
“Without operating relief, they will be permanently lost,” he said.