Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant powers

Whether using natural gas or oil-generated power produced here in the city, hydroelectricity purchased from Maine or nuclear energy from New Hampshire, the Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant is focused on reliability and keeping rates low.

“We run whatever is economical,” said TMLP general manager Michael Horrigan. “Taunton has multiple resources for power,Shop the best selection of men's solarsystemsproducts and pendants. not just its own generation plant. … It’s a blend of taking all these factors at a price that is suitable to keep us on the low end for customers.”

Serving around 36,000 customers in the Taunton area, including Raynham, Berkley and North Dighton, the TMLP has a load of approximately 170 megawatts of power, using a combination of energy produced at the TMLP generation station on Somerset Avenue and power purchased from resources throughout the region.

Homemade electricity

The Cleary Flood Generating Station in Taunton, with two generating units housed in the same building, is capable of generating a combined 136 megawatts of electricity. That’s of the 170 megawatts that is mandated.

Cleary Flood station’s “Unit 9,” built in the 1970s with a capacity of 110 megawatts and a dual fuel system for natural gas or oil, has a 20-megawatt gas turbine that operates like a jet engine, feeding heat into a boiler that creates steam to turn a 90-megawatt generator.Like a lot of women,Custom made ledaluminumbulbs? The 26-megawatt Unit 8 was built in the 1960s and only burns oil.

While TMLP officials said they can’t disclose how much oil they burn compared to natural gas — because of industry competition — they said that during the last 10 years they have generated power using “primarily” natural gas.

“We love burning natural gas,” Horrigan said.

The TMLP gets its natural gas from all over the country and from Canada, with some coming from Southern states like Louisiana and some from Pennsylvania and Boston.

The use of natural gas at TMLP dates back to the mid ’80s, Horrigan said. Natural gas is generally cheaper nowadays, compared to 40 years ago when oil was “dirt cheap” — around 12.2 cents per gallon (it’s about $4 a gallon today), he said. But this isn’t always the case,Choose a ledfoglamp from featuring superior clothes drying programmes and precise temperature controls. Horrigan said.

The TMLP sometimes must depend on oil, when natural gas prices skyrocket due to demand, he said. For instance, last winter the Taunton plant ran on oil “for a few days” because of the demand on

natural gas during the peak of the season for home heating.

‘Fuel agnostic’ contracts

Because of the fluctuations in the market, the TMLP likes to fulfill its need for about 170 megawatts by using a “diversity” of sources, Horrigan said.

Currently, TMLP said it has one contract that compromises 30 percent of the TMLP power load, said James Irving, the principal resource analyst for the vertically integrated public utility. Without giving away too many details, Irving compared the contract to a retirement account, explaining the fuel sources are actually unknown to the TMLP.

“It’s just like they are selling a product like a 401k,” he said. “You are getting rid of risk. I think it’s a great price. If I didn’t buy it from the broker that price could be very high. I’m trying to get rid of the price risk. It’s a portfolio approach.”

Ken Goulart, power production manager for the TMLP, described its power contracts as being “fuel agnostic,” adding that, “we just want the best value for the ratepayer.”

The TMLP said that it buys and is supplied energy from the Seabrook Station nuclear plant in New Hampshire, with an ownership share for 1.034 megawatts, in addition to power from the gas-fired Watson Station in Braintree. The TMLP also gets power from three large-scale solar projects in the Taunton area (totaling 9 megawatts) that sprouted up in recent years,You are currently browsing the tsg archives for "leddownlights". with another dozen small-scale commercial projects, along with landfill gas energy projects at the Taunton landfill (four units), the Fall River landfill and the Granby landfill. The TMLP also gets a portion of hydroelectricity from the New York Power Authority, and the Miller Hydro Group in Maine.

Unlike companies like NStar and National Grid, the vertically integrated TMLP is not only acquiring power through such contracts, in addition to transmission and customer service, it also leaves a portion of its own energy open to the market, Irving said.

Federal regulations, regional oversight

The amount of energy that the TMLP produces is controlled by ISO-NE, a nonprofit independent system operator tasked with preventing a mass power failure. ISO-NE monitors and controls power production at the TMLP and every other power production plant in the region.

The Holyoke-based ISO-NE is responsible for operating the entire 32,000-megawatt bulk electric power generation and transmission system throughout New England. Goulart said the organization could call the TMLP at any time for it to change its levels of power generation.We invite you to experience choose waffenssuniforms for you.

“It could be in the middle of the night,” Goulart said.

ISO-NE was created in the mid-’90s, replacing the New England Power Pool under the approval of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that was in place since 1971 (implemented following the great Northeast power blackout of 1965 that affected more than 30 million people). Read the full story at www.soli-lite.com!