Alliant plans power plant fuel change

Alliant Energy's Iowa utility is planning to convert the largest boiler and turbine unit at the 245-megawatt Prairie Creek Generating Station in southwest Cedar Rapids from coal to natural gas in 2017.

Alliant spokesman Justin Foss said the conversion is designed to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at the power plant. The 149-megawatt unit, which burns ultra low sulfur coal, began generating electricity in 1968.

Foss said the cost of the conversion is not known.

'We're very early in the planning process,” he said. 'We also are studying whether to convert the other units at Prairie Creek from coal to natural gas by 2025.”

Foss said Alliant also plans to stop burning coal at the utility's 200-megawatt Burlington generating station in 2021.

'Our planning assumptions are that we will transition that plant to natural gas, but a final determination on that is yet to come,” Foss said.

Earlier this year, Alliant converted the M.L. Kapp Generating Station in Clinton from coal to natural gas. The company transitioned the Sutherland Generating Station in Marshalltown from coal to natural gas in 2013.

Foss said Alliant also has installed a significant amount of equipment in recent years at Prairie Creek and other coal-burning power plants in Iowa to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxide.

Electric utilities nationwide are under pressure to reduce sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and mercury emissions to support compliance with the federal Mercury Air and Toxics Standards rule. One of the primary alternatives is conversion to natural gas.

Alliant is constructing a $700 million, 650-megawatt natural gas fired electric generating plant in Marshalltown. The facility is expected to power more than 500,000 homes when it begins commercial operation in the second quarter of 2017.