On the April 12 Trains newswire is a story about an Arkansas power company suing UP for cutting back it’s supply of coal from the PRB. Entergy Arkansas says they suffered a big loss, when PRB coal shipments were reduced 20%. They had to “reduce operations” at 2 Arkansas power plants, and buy higher priced electricity on the open market.
It didn’t sound like the plants ran out of coal. Why “reduce operations” and buy power, when there is still coal in the pile? Can anybody explain what must be more to this story?
Starting and stopping a power plant is an involved process - if they cut back their power output, the coal will last longer and they won’t have to shut down the plant.
Not much different than if someone cuts back your food allowance - do you cut back on how much you eat at each meal so you can keep eating, or do you continue to consume at the same rate, then run completely out of food?
That certainly makes sense. I wonder why we didn’t see big headlines about it sometime in the past? There were quite a few national news stories saying “[:O] Our powere plants may run out of coal!!!” Here, apparently, 2 plants were running out of coal.
MS,
Check out the Altamont Press newswire, there are many articles and BNSF/UP updates to the PRB situation.
Wasn’t this caused by or attached to the access tracks and derailment problems they had?