The Tennessee Valley Authority on Jan. 2 announced that 750 megawatts of new generation recently came online at its Paradise Combined Cycle Plant in Kentucky.
The three new state-of-the-art natural gas units designed to withstand temperature extremes are online at Paradise just in time for winter weather, TVA noted. The combustion turbine units are designed to start within minutes when electricity demand increases.
The units began commercial operation on Dec. 31. During testing, the three units came online to full power within 11 minutes.
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, TVA said.
“Natural gas is an important part of our transition to a carbon-neutral future while maintaining reliability,” said TVA President and CEO Jeff Lyash in a statement. “These state-of-the-art units will allow us to respond quickly to load demand and improve flexibility as we add more renewable energy, which is not always available on demand.”
The new units are part of TVA’s plan to add more than 3,800 MW of generation to the grid by 2028.
TVA in December provided details on the most comprehensive cold-weather preparedness overhaul in TVA’s 90-year history -- a to-do list of nearly 3,400 items that began earlier in 2023 with the addition of more stringent winterization standards.
