Despite a severe weather system with sub-zero temperatures and a boost in electricity demand, the approximately 1.7 million homes served by FirstEnergy Solutions’ (FES) Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants in Ohio experienced no service disruptions.
Referring to the bone-chilling cold snap from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, the company said in a statement that the two plants, which account for 14 percent of the state’s overall generation capacity, proved how they can be of great benefit to customers during extreme weather systems.
Whether the performance of the plants this time around will save them from an early shutdown is another matter entirely. FES announced plans last year to prematurely deactivate its nuclear plants in the coming two to three years unless the company received the legislative backing and saw the tangible marketing reforms required to keep them operating.
“Our nuclear plants contribute to the fuel diversity and fuel security of the regional grid and are able to withstand natural disasters and terrorist attacks,” said Paul Harden, senior vice president and chief operating officer of FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC), in a statement. FENOC is the operating subsidiary of the plants. “FES plants can also run for up to two years between refueling outages. We hope that market reforms are implemented that appropriately values our plants and considers the significant contributions they make to the communities they serve.”
While the plants could be shut down early, that doesn’t mean the company plans to let up on ensuring that they’re safe and reliable.
“We continue to operate all of our plants at the highest levels of safety and reliability,” Harden said in a statement. “Our dedicated employees worked through the bone-chilling cold to ensure that all our nuclear plants remained online and safe.”
Nuclear plants are constructed to withstand extreme temperatures whether hot or cold. In fact, a winterization program is in place to ensure that the plants’ critical operation systems are safeguarded from freezing temperatures. For FENOC, the process to ensure that the plants can withstand anything the elements can throw at them is a yearlong process.
FES provides 90 percent of the state’s zero-emission generation. The company’s Beaver Valley facility in Pennsylvania is one of the nine nuclear energy providers that make up 94 percent of the state’s zero-emission generation.
To learn more about FES’s plan to eventually deactivate plants, check out FirstEnergy Solutions Files Deactivation Notice for Oil- and Coal-fired Plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania.