DTE Power Plant Fire

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gar

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Ann Arbor, Michigan
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EE
160811-2306 EDT

At 6:30 PM today a fire broke out at the DTE St. Clair Power Plant. As of 11 PM there were about 100 fire fighters from about 35 departments, and one tall ladder truck from Canada at the plant. Across the river in Canada there are many chemical plants.

There were reports that an explosion or fire broke out in one generating unit. All workers from the afternoon shift are accounted for. No one has been back in the building yet. The fire is still active.

The emergency procedure included shutting down everything in the plant, and disconnection from the high voltage distribution system. This is primarily a coal plant.

This is just a short distance from Port Huron where Tom Edison grew up as boy.

Some references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Clair_Power_Plant this link should work.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/massive-fire-reported-michigan-power-plant-41316947 this link may not work.
http://mediacomtoday.com/news/read/...sive_fire_reported_at_michigan_power_plant-ap
this one has still pictures you can step thru. I can't get this one to load, but if you Google search for --- DTE St Clair plant fire --- you should be able to find the link to this.

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160811-2425 EDT

I took a look at some of the news videos and there is so much advertizing junk that there are none I would recomend.

Note that this plant is a substantial part of DTE's genertion capacity, near 2 MW. About 16% of total capacity.

DTE power portfolio.

Out of its total 13,041 MW of electric generating capacity in 2005 (1.22% of the U.S. total),
DTE Energy produces 61.3% from coal, 16.4% from natural gas, 11.7% from oil, 9.3% from nuclear, and 0.2% from biomass.

The Wiki link in my first post has the GPS coordinates for the plant, and Google Earth provides a good view.

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160812-1204 EDT

Most of the news reports have about the same words.

From Crain's
"Now that the fire is extinguished, we will have limited access to the plant to begin accessing the situation," DTE said. "We expect the plant to remain closed and do not have an estimate at this time as to when the plant will reopen."
Click to expand...

Another quote
The St. Clair plant is one three DTE coal-fired facilities scheduled to be closed over the next seven years. The other two plants to be shut down are at River Rouge and Trenton. The plants together generated about 25 percent of electricity produced by the utility in 2015 or enough to power 900,000 homes, according to the company. The utility said it will replace them a mix of newer, more modern sources such as wind, natural gas and solar.
Click to expand...
This is an illogical statement. Those other plants in the 25% were not affected by this fire. A more accurate calculation on the capacity loss than my last night's estimate of 16% is 1928 MW13,041 MW = 0.148 or about 15%.

This loss may not affect DTE's ability to service customers, but it certainly will affect their cost. St Clair power is probably about $ 0.03 / kWh, and on a hot day, like the past two and today, the DTE power cost for purchased power is likely to be over $ 1 / kWh.

Some power people may be able to tell us about the problems to try to put this plant back in operation after millions of gallons of water have been pumped into the plant.

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