Harding Street Station

Generating station in Indianapolis, Indiana, US

39°42′34″N 86°11′48″W / 39.70944°N 86.19667°W / 39.70944; -86.19667StatusOperationalCommission dateUnits 1 and 2 (oil): Nov 1931
Unit 3 (oil): Sept 1941
Unit 4 (oil): June 1947
Unit 5 (coal/gas): June 1958/Dec 2015
Unit 6 (coal/gas): May 1961/Dec 2015
Unit 7 (coal/gas): July 1973/2016
Unit IC1 (oil): 1967
Units GT1–GT3 (oil): May, 1973
Unit GT4 (gas): 1994
Unit GT5 (gas): 1995
Unit GT6 (gas): 2002Owner(s)AES IndianaThermal power station Primary fuelNatural gas, distillate fuel oilTurbine technologySteam, gas turbineCooling sourceWhite RiverPower generation Units operational6Nameplate capacity1,196 MWe

[edit on Wikidata]

The Harding Street Station (formerly Elmer W. Stout Generating Station^[1]) is a 12-unit, 1,196 MW nameplate capacity, gas-, coal, and oil-fired generating station^[2] located at 3700 S. Harding St., in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. It is owned by AES Indiana, a subsidiary of AES (formerly known as Indianapolis Power & Light). Completed in 1973, Harding Street Station's tallest chimneys are 565 feet (172 m) in height.^[3]

Environmental impact

Sulphur dioxide

With its oldest coal-fired unit dating back to 1958, the plant was ranked 12th on the United States list of dirtiest power plants in terms of sulphur dioxide emissions per megawatt-hour of electrical energy produced from coal in 2005.^[4]

The new flue gas desulphurization system (FGS), also known as a scrubber, and the new stack are expected to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emissions by 97 percent, and NOx emissions, as well as other pollutants, by some 87 percent.^{[citation needed]}

IPL stopped burning coal at the Harding Street facility in 2016 and retrofitted the units to natural gas.^[5]^[6]

Coal ash ponds

On the south side of the former plant is a sequence of unlined coal ash ponds. As of 2019, there were 27 groundwater monitoring wells. Between 2016 and 2019, 24 of these were polluted above federal advisory levels of molybdenum, boron, lithium, sulfate, arsenic, antimony, selenium, and cobalt.^[7]

References

^ Glischinski, Steve (2007). Regional Railroads of the Midwest. Saint Paul, MN: Voyageur Press. p. 48. ISBN 9780760323519. OCLC 68786766.
^ "Existing Electric Generating Units in the United States, 2008" (Excel). Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy. 2008. Retrieved November 11, 2009.
^ "Power & Light Unit On Line". The Indianapolis News. July 18, 1973. p. 72. Retrieved October 30, 2023 – via Newspapers.com. The unit's exhaust stack is 565 feet high, tallest in the Ipalco system.
^ Environmental Integrity Project. "Dirty Kilowatts America’s Most Polluting Power Plants." (July 2006). https://ashtracker.org/publications/Dirty_Kilowatts.pdf.
^ "Indianapolis Power's Harding Street plant burns its last coal | Transmission Intelligence Service". www.transmissionhub.com. Retrieved November 1, 2022.
^ SEC. "Ipalco Enterprises, Inc. 2020 Annual Report 10-K". SEC.report. Retrieved 2022-11-01.
^ Ashtracker. "Harding Street Generating Station". Ashtracker. Retrieved November 1, 2022.