W.S. Lee Station

Capacity: 810 megawatts
Location: Anderson County, S.C.
Commercial Date: 2018
Status: Operating

Named after a distinguished engineer, the William States Lee Station in Anderson County, S.C., includes a new 750-megawatt combined-cycle natural gas plant, a 180-megawatt natural gas boiler and two dual-fuel 42-megawatt simple-cycle units. Combined, the station generates about 1,000 megawatts of energy.

The new natural gas plant started serving customers in April 2018 and benefits 2.5 million customers in the Carolinas.

In 2014, Duke Energy retired two 1960s-era coal-fired units at the station and converted a third unit (mentioned above) to natural gas in 2015.

Though Duke Energy no longer operates any coal-fired plants in South Carolina, the company continues to manage two coal ash basins, an inactive basin from the 1950s, a structural fill and an ash fill area at the site.

These storage units historically held about 3.2 million tons of ash. The company has accelerated its ash basin closure work across the fleet. In September 2014, the company announced plans to excavate the inactive basin and fill area to a fully lined solution. Since May 2015, this ash has been safely transported to the R&B Landfill in Homer, Ga., and this work was completed, as expected, in 2017. In December 2015, the company announced the primary basin, secondary basin and structural fill would also be excavated. The company is working on permitting an on-site, fully lined landfill to permanently manage this ash.