Dover Municipal Power Plant

Dover Municipal Light & Power Plant is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by the City of Dover, Ohio.

On November 22, 2011, NRG Dover said the coal plant will be converted to natural gas by May 2012, funded through a state-assisted, $26.5 million project of the Energy Efficiency Investment Fund.

History
The NRG Dover plant began operating in 1983, and sells wholesale power on the regional PJM grid, as well as provide industrial steam to adjacent operations at Kraft Foods and Procter & Gamble. Although Delaware has ordered most big, 25-megawatt and larger plants to install pollution controls, the 18-megawatt coal unit at NRG Dover escaped mandatory reforms because of its relatively small size.

Plant Data

 * Owner/Parent Entity: City of Dover, OH
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 31.5 MW (Megawatts)
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 4.0 MW (1944), 8.0 MW (1954), 19.5 MW (1968)
 * Location: 303 East Broadway St., Dover, OH 44622
 * GPS Coordinates: 40.520621, -81.467821
 * Electricity Production: 69,600 MWh (2005)
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * CO2 Emissions: 131,067 tons (2006)
 * SO2 Emissions: 2,017 tons (2002)
 * SO2 Emissions per MWh: 57.96 lb/MWh
 * NOx Emissions: 294 tons (2002)
 * Mercury Emissions:

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Dover Municipal Power Plant
In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants. Fine particle pollution consists of a complex mixture of soot, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Among these particles, the most dangerous are those less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which are so tiny that they can evade the lung's natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease. The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, and pneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal plant emissions. These deaths and illnesses are major examples of coal's external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities. To monetize the health impact of fine particle pollution from each coal plant, Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.

Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from the Dover Municipal Power Plant
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed February 2011

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