Tagged: Louisville Gas and Electric

The Public Service Commission will hold a hearing tomorrow evening to let the public weigh in on a proposed utility rate increase.

Louisville Gas and Electric says it doesn’t expect customer bills to increase as much as the company predicted last year.

Louisville Gas and Electric announced today that the company's coal-fired Cane Run Power Plant will be shut down eight months earlier than planned.

The company announced plans to convert the power plant to natural gas last year, and construction on the new facility is going faster than expected. The coal-fired plant should be shut down by May 2015.

Here's what LG&E had to say in a news release:

Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities are terminating the company’s contract with coal producer Consol Energy.

This news in and of itself isn’t huge—to put it in perspective, LG&E/KU burns 16 million tons of coal a year, and the company’s contract with Consol was only for 500,000 tons. But it was a good excuse to take a look at how the utility uses coal, and how its usage might change in the future.

Louisville Gas and Electric has withdrawn its permit application for an additional coal ash landfill at its Cane Run plant.

Coal ash, its storage and its tendency to blow onto neighboring properties have all been headaches for LG&E at Cane Run and the company is planning on phasing it out to build a natural gas facility.

The landfill application, which has been pending since January 2010, was dropped due to the slated natural gas facility and to the building of an earthen wall that allows the existing landfill to hold more coal ash.