Mountaineer Power Plant

The Mountaineer Power Plant is a major coal-fired power plant outside New Haven, West Virginia, USA. Owned by American Electric Power (AEP), it has one of the tallest chimneys in the world at . This chimney was built as part of the plant in 1980 and is not in use now. It has been replaced by a slightly shorter and wider chimney for the electrostatic precipitator and scrubber units.

The AEP Mountaineer Plant is what is known as a 1300 megawatt plant. The actual total capacity of the plant's two turbines is around 1480 MW, and the plant averages around 1420 MW. 1300 MW is the net power that actually leaves the plant, whereas the difference between the turbine output and the 1300 MW is required to run the plant itself. It is a "closed-loop" plant in that it recycles the cooling water used, however it requires approximately per hour of "make up" water to be drawn from the Ohio River to replace the water that is lost in water vapor through the cooling tower and the precipitator/scrubber chimney.

The plant burns an average of 9,000 tons (8,200 metric tons) of coal per day, and some of that coal now comes via barge on the Ohio River to an elaborate coal unloading and storage facility.The other portion of coal comes from Big River Mining. An underground coal mine right across the street from the plant. It is mined, cleaned, processed, and shipped by a belt line across the street to the power plant. This single boiler, dual turbine plant produces enough energy...
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