Big Rivers produces 936 net megawatts of generating capacity from three power stations: Robert D. Green (454 MW), Robert Reid CT (65 MW), and D.B. Wilson (417 MW).

Big Rivers continues to make plant investments to improve cost-effective energy in western Kentucky. Crews dismantled and reconstructed the Flue Gas Desulfurization (FGD) scrubber system from our retired Coleman Station to Wilson Station in 2022. The scrubber has a sulfur dioxide (SO2) removal rate of 98%, compared to 90% with the former scrubber, and the improvements will extend the useful life of Wilson Station while lowering the cost to produce energy. Big Rivers negotiates long-term flyash contracts used to make concrete, and the power plant’s FGD by-product is key to the production of synthetic gypsum for drywall. This beneficial reuse also eliminates our landfill disposal, disposal cost, and landfill maintenance – a reduction of operations and maintenance costs by $1.5 million each year.

The Green Station coal-to-gas conversion project in early 2022 further diversified Big Rivers’ fuel portfolio while maintaining the original nameplate capacity. The updated plant meets all targets for emissions and steam temperatures, with the conversion keeping the plant online and able to dispatch reliable power with greater flexibility and at reduced costs for operations and maintenance.

The total power capacity is 1,114 MW, including contracted capacity from the Southeastern Power Administration (SEPA).

BIG RIVERS POWER PLANT LOCATIONS

Big Rivers delivers energy via an owned, operated, and maintained 1,353-mile transmission system that provides power transmission to its three Member-Owners and third-party entities, like Owensboro Municipal Utilities.

We continue to expand the number of 69 kV Remote Controlled Switching (RCS) installations on our transmission system to improve restoration times to Big Rivers Member-Owner substations following service interruptions. RCS at specific locations on the transmission system improves Big Rivers’ ability to quickly and remotely sectionalize and restore the Member-Owner substations, allowing our Energy Control Center to operate the high-voltage switches remotely instead of having to dispatch a technician to the site to switch the equipment manually to restore power.

Big Rivers’ Automatic Restoration and Sectionalization (ARS) schemes improve reliability and restoration of service to our Member-Owners. These self-healing schemes operates a multi-step preprogrammed operation that automatically sheds unnecessary transmission line sections and separates the 69 kV circuit outage. Big Rivers can perform this action since most of our transmission system is in a networked configuration that allows service to our Member-Owner substations from multiple transmission line sources. Through this automatic reconfiguration of the transmission system, Big Rivers can quickly reenergize rural delivery point substations. We have added microprocessor-based relays that provide additional data and information when service interruptions occur. The data allows our engineers to analyze whether each operation was a proper operation and provides the operations group with necessary information on areas to inspect for potential equipment damage.

These projects help us improve our reliability statistics. System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) is calculated by the Sum of all Customer Interruption Duration (customer minutes) divided by the Total Number of Customers Served.

Big Rivers’ SAIDI score in 2023 was 1.404 minutes. On average, each customer experienced 1.404 minutes of outages and transmission service was available 99.99% of the time, which is top quartile performance for utilities

Chris Bradley
VP System Operations