Nearly a decade after TVA shut down its Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant near Bridgeport and abandoned construction of the unfinished Bellefonte nuclear plant in Hollywood, the federal utility is looking at building a different type of power plant in Jackson County, Alabama.
The Tennessee Valley Authority has begun a study on whether to build a pumped storage power plant at either of two mountain ridges along the Tennessee River in Northeast Alabama.
The proposed hydroelectric storage facility would be similar to the Raccoon Mountain pumped storage facility built by TVA just west of Chattanooga in the 1970s. If the project proves feasible, TVA projects the new pumped storage plant would cost from $2 billion to $4 billion to construct and create about 1,000 temporary construction jobs and 60 permanent facility jobs.
As a type of giant storage battery for TVA, the pumped storage plant could be critical in helping TVA store power generated by the sun or wind and delivering the power when needed most, especially when renewable power sources are not available.
TVA is considering building a 1,600-megawatt pumped storage plant in Northeast Alabama at either the former Widows Creek coal plant near Stevenson, Alabama, or at Rorex Creek near Pisgah, Alabama.