A Cleveland Public Power lineman works on a power line on East 118th Street in Cleveland.
CLEVELAND — “Five years ago, Cleveland city officials embraced a plan to build a coal-fired power plant in southern Illinois in the hopes that owning a portion of the facility would help city-owned Cleveland Public Power control the cost of electricity for its customers in a mercurial market.
So far, however, the plant has failed to live up to its billing.
City officials confirmed in an interview last week, that from March through May, CPP paid a total of $753,000 though it received no electricity because the plant was inoperative and experiencing technical problems. And in the plant’s first year, CPP will pay a rate 42 percent higher than the market price, though CPP’s original sales pitch to City Council and the public predicted the plant’s rates wouldn’t hit those rates until 2025.
Critics of CPP’s agreement to become part-owners of the Prairie State Energy Campus argue that the utility has learned nothing from its earlier investment in a failed power plant project in southeastern Ohio — a debacle for which the city of Cleveland owes about $8 million, though nary a smokestack was built on the site…
…Sandy Buchanan, executive director of Ohio Citizen Action, said the plant has become a ‘financial and environmental nightmare,’ and Cleveland and the other cities that committed to it in search of cheap electricity are now the de facto owners.”
Leila Atassi, The Plain Dealer
