Oklaunion Power Plant
Oklaunion Power Plant is a 650-megawatt, coal power plant located southeast of Vernon, Texas, in Wilbarger County, Texas. Its unit is operated by American Electric Power. The plant began commercial generation in 1986.
History
The construction for Oklaunion began in 1982 and was commissioned by West Texas Utilities, a forerunner of AEP. The plant commenced commercial generation in December 1986. Initially, the coal was transported from the Rawhide Mine in Wyoming. In 2017, the plant received 719,467 short tons of coal from the North Antelope Rochelle Mine by train according to the Energy Information Administration. The plant's cooling source came from Lake Diversion, located in Archer and Baylor County, Texas.In September 2018, AEP announced it was shutting down Oklaunion by September 2020, citing production costs and being no longer competitive in the power market. The plant was bought by Frontier Energy, which planned to convert it to natural gas over five years.