Wisconsin Public Service Corp.'s coal-fired Pulliam power plant could close as soon as fall 2018.
The WEC Energy Group Inc. subsidiary in October 2016 said it intended to retire plant in Green Bay, Wis., and WEC in November told investors that retirement will happen in the fall of 2018 or later. The exact date depends on a few things, said Wisconsin Public Service spokesman Matt Cullen.
The company must first wait for transmission grid upgrades that are a part of American Transmission Co. LLC's Bay Lake project to wrap up. The Bay Lake project is intended to reinforce the transmission grid in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and northeastern Wisconsin. That is scheduled to be complete in late 2018, Cullen said. The regional grid operator, the Midcontinent ISO, must also approve retirement of the units.
The oldest units at the Pulliam plant date from the 1940s and already have been shut down. Two were retired under a settlement reached in early 2013 with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice. Of the two remaining units, Unit 7 entered service in November 1958 and has an operating capacity of about 80 MW, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. Its capacity factor for 2016 was 10.53%. Unit 8 has been in service since December 1964 and has an operating capacity of about 135 MW. It was used a little more frequently in 2016, with a capacity factor of 22.33%.
In 2017, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data, the plants received coal from Cloud Peak Energy Inc.'s Antelope Coal Mine in Converse County, Wyo., and Peabody Energy Corp.'s North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Campbell County, Wyo.

Cullen said a few factors led to the decision to retire the plant, including changing energy market economics and customer demand for electricity. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence data, operation and maintenance costs at the plant have been running at more than $50/MWh to above $70/MWh while day-ahead, on-peak power prices at MISO's WPS. Pulliam 8 pricing node have in the past three years rarely topped $40/MWh.

"This is really part of WEC Energy Group's efforts to reshape its generation fleet for a clean and reliable energy future," Cullen said.
As part of this effort, WEC Energy is pursuing the addition of 350 MW of utility-scale solar generation, Cullen said. The company is evaluating options to purchase that generation from third-party developers.
"Taken as a whole, the reshaping of our generation fleet should reduce power supply costs to our customer, preserve fuel diversity, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions," Cullen said.
WPS corporate affiliate WE Energies, whose legal name is Wisconsin Electric Power Co., recently announced plans to retire the coal-fired Pleasant Prairie plant, with a nameplate capacity of 1,234 MW, by the second quarter of 2018.
