Asheville Plant

Capacity: 344 megawatts
Location: Arden, North Carolina
Commercial Date: 1964
Status: Retired

The two-unit, 344-megawatt Asheville coal plant retired on Jan. 29, 2020. The plant started serving customers in June 1964.

The Asheville Combined Cycle Station, a cleaner-burning, highly efficient natural gas station, replaced the coal plant. In 2017, Duke Energy started building the new 560-megawatt combined-cycle natural gas plant to accommodate burgeoning growth in the area and meet customer demand. Building highly efficient natural gas plants is also part of the company's balanced approach to providing customers reliable and increasingly clean energy. Though the new natural gas plant is geographically located in Arden, N.C., its energy is fed to the grid, which benefits customers in both North Carolina and South Carolina.

The Asheville Combined Cycle Station is Duke Energy's most efficient in the Carolinas – and 75% more efficient than the now-retired coal plant it replaced.

Duke Energy customers benefit dollar for dollar from this efficiency through lower power plant fuel costs.

Because natural gas burns cleaner than coal, carbon dioxide emissions at the site have dropped by about 60% per megawatt-hour in comparison to the now-retired coal plant. Sulfur dioxide is expected to decrease by 99% and nitrogen oxides by 40%. Mercury has also been eliminated.

The Asheville site also has two simple-cycle combustion turbines capable of producing 320 megawatts of energy. 

Have a Question? Email your questions to:
CoalAshQuestions@duke-energy.com