Unit 5 at W.A. Parish Electric Generating Station near Thompsons is being restarted after being shut down for maintenance, and is expected to emit excess particulates into the air during the procedure.
The start-up begain on Saturday and is expected to be completed by Tuesday, Parish plant owner NRG Energy Inc. reported to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
The report did not say when 649-megawatt coal-fired Unit 5 was taken off-line, but said only that it had been shut down for a maintenance outage. “Excess opacity emission may occur during the start-up procedure,” the report said.
On March 4, the Parish plant reported that Unit 5 reported opacity emissions that exceeded its air permit for six minutes, due to a “control system malfunction and inadvertent bypass of the opacity emission control system baghouse.”
Unit 5 also was shut down for maintenance earlier this year, and restarted March 2-3.
