A coal power plant in Texas, America’s newest, set to stay idle until 2027
The Sandy Creek Energy Station is America’s newest coal-fired power plant, and it’s expected to remain offline until 2027. The power plant near Waco, Texas, which began delivering power to the grid in 2013, suffered a major failure in April after it was shuttered for maintenance.
The extended outage comes as Texas’ electric grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, has sounded the alarm over rising demand for electricity. While solar and battery development are booming across Texas, the state government is offering low-interest loans to incentivize the construction of new power plants. And the coal plant outage highlights a growing debate over which energy sources are best suited to power large loads.
What happened at Sandy Creek?
If it were operating, the 932-megawatt Sandy Creek plant would be able to power more than half a million homes. The coal plant shut down in late February for routine maintenance ahead of summer, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. It remained offline through April 21.
Operators restarted the unit on April 22 and 23. Power output climbed slowly before nearly reaching full capacity by 9 p.m. on the second day. But shortly after 11 p.m., a major failure forced a complete shutdown, according to a report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The power plant hasn’t run since.
ERCOT initially reported that the facility would return to service on June 1, 2026. The grid operator now does not expect Sandy Creek to be back online until March 31, 2027 — a total outage exceeding two years, according to ERCOT’s September Monthly Outlook for Resource Adequacy.
The exact cause of the failure has not been publicly disclosed. The power plants’ owners, including Sandy Creek Energy Associates and the Lower Colorado River Authority, did not respond to questions from Straight Arrow News.
What’s the history of the power plant?
This is not the first incident to befall Sandy Creek. Over a decade ago, the power plant’s initial startup was delayed by more than a year.
Construction nearly finished in late 2011, with the plant expected to begin commercial operations in early 2012. But during testing in October 2011, the boiler sustained severe damage when tubes overheated, according to Standard & Poor’s. The credit rating agency downgraded its financial outlook on the project following the incident.
Repairs stretched beyond a year. The plant finally started commercial operations in May 2013, according to reporting by NPR.
What does it say about coal power and reliability?
The outage comes as the Trump administration has ordered some coal plants to stay open past their initially planned retirement dates. The administration’s energy policy has prioritized large power plants that are designed to operate through all hours of the day, instead of wind and solar power, that is dependent on specific weather conditions.
In a press release announcing federal funding for the coal industry, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said coal power is “vital to keeping electricity prices low and the lights on without interruption.”
In this view, power plants are more valuable for the grid because they are not intermittent sources. However, some experts say the Sandy Creek outage highlights what can go wrong with large power plants.
“The two-year outage at Sandy Creek highlights the reliability risks of fossil-fueled power,” Seth Feaster, an energy data analyst at IEEFA, wrote, “and reinforces the need for wind, solar and battery sources that are more distributed and more reliable.”
Sandy Creek’s problems echo those at Comanche 3, a 750-MW coal unit in Colorado that opened in 2010. After repeated outages, including a year-long closure in 2020, owner Xcel Energy agreed to close the plant in 2030 — some 40 years earlier than originally planned.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
