TVA adds 750 MW to Kentucky combined-cycle plant
Combined Cycle

TVA adds 750 MW to Kentucky combined-cycle plant

Three new natural gas units designed to withstand temperature extremes are now online at Paradise Combined Cycle Plant, the Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA) announced.

The combustion turbine units, totaling an additional 750 MW, are designed to reach full power within minutes when electricity demand increases. The GE 7F.05 units began commercial operation on Dec. 31, and during testing, the three units came online to full power within 11 minutes, TVA said.

The new units join three other combustion turbines that began operating in July at the Colbert site in northern Alabama. Together, the two new sites add almost 1,500 MW to the grid that didn’t exist last winter.

The new units are part of TVA’s plan to add more than 3,800 MW of generation to the grid by 2028, according to Jamie Cook, TVA’s General Manager of Major Projects.

“Many of TVA’s new CTs are replacing older, less efficient units,” said Cook. “We can also operate them when other sources of generation, like solar, aren’t available. They supplement those sources with reliable power when we need it most.”

In September 2023, TVA and TC Energy announced they were investing $1.25 million to study carbon capture retrofits at TVA’s natural gas-fired plants in Mississippi and Kentucky, implying the Ackerman plant and the Paradise plant, respectively. Both are combined-cycle facilities.

The aim is to assess the feasibility, costs, and impacts of carbon capture technology as part of TVA’s decarbonization efforts. TVA said study findings will inform future decisions regarding TVA’s generation fleet. The federal utility’s goal is to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

In 2020, TVA shut down the last coal-fired unit at Paradise Fossil Plant after 50 years of operation. Paradise Unit 3, located in Muhlenberg County near the Green River, began operation in 1970 with a net generating capacity of 1,080 MW. It generated enough electricity to supply more than 800,000 average homes.

TVA’s Board of Directors voted in 2019 to retire the unit. The other two coal-fired units at Paradise were retired in 2017. That generation was replaced with a combined-cycle natural gas plant with a baseload capacity of 1,025 MW, which began operation next to the fossil plant site in 2017.

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