TVA's Gallatin Plant
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In Gallatin, TN, on the Cumberland River, is TVA's Gallatin Steam Plant.
It was completed in 1959.
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This four unit coal burner is rated for 988 Megawatts, burning 383 tons
per hour to do it.
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We have a lot to learn about how coal plants work. I mean, obviously,
coal is burned to heat water to produce steam to spin a turbine that
spins a generator, but there is more to it than that. Here is a view
of some of the coal handling facilities. There were a lot of rails on
the site, but most looked like they were seldom used. We are guessing
that most of the coal comes in by barge... the Cumberland is navigable
at this point.
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A view of the other side of the plant, and what looks to be a
transformer yard.
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And the switchyard, with quite a few circuits coming out. Coal plants
are baseload plants. That is, because it takes a while to get them
started, they run all the time, providing the electricity
"base" that is always required. However, this switchyard does
not only serve the coal plant...
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...but also a group of Combustion Turbines on the grounds. Combustion
Turbines, or "CTs", can burn natural gas or oil. They are
basically jet engines, configured to produce "spin power"
instead of thrust, hooked up to a generator. They can be spun up and online
very quickly, and so make great "peak load" plants, for the
extra power required when it gets real cold (or hot) and demand for
electricity skyrockets.
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Their downside is they are very expensive to operate, so they are
strictly used for high demand and emergencies. TVA generated less than
one percent of their power with CTs in FY2000. This is probably a fuel
tank.
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Our brochure stated that Gallatin had four CTs, good for 352 Megawatts,
or 88 apiece, that were installed in 1975. We found a report on TVAs
website that stated four more were added in 2000. These are
probably the new ones. We are not sure what capacity this added, but it
was probably at least the 350 Megawatts that the four older ones
provided.
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A closeup of one of the units. More stuff to figure out!
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And the "bagged it" shot.
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