Coal’s role in the power sector has been declining for years:  the aging coal fleet is increasingly unreliable and expensive to operate — creating billions of dollars in losses for ratepayers annually — and lower cost sources of power have grown exponentially to take its place.

From an operations and planning perspective, transitioning away from coal requires proactive action to minimize the risk of disruptions that could stem from turning these legacy generators off overnight. Notably, utilities, states, and regional grid operators all do thorough analyses today to ensure that planned retirements will not negatively impact the grid and will provide cost benefits for customers. As such, forcing retiring coal to support grid reliability is incredibly costly and burdensome for customers, with minimal reliability benefit.

For coal plants without imminent retirement dates, one way that utilities can make a smooth transition away from coal — in a way that benefits ratepayers and communities and avoids reliability cliffs — includes pairing economic dispatch and clean repowering. In other words, utilities can operate coal less often and more flexibly, and by doing so make room for low-cost replacement power to quickly support the grid.

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