Monroe Power Plant

Monroe Power Plant
DTE Electric Company's Monroe Power Plant
Location of Monroe Power Plant in Michigan
Country	United States
Location	Monroe, Michigan
Coordinates	41°53′21″N 83°20′44″W / 41.88917°N 83.34556°W / 41.88917; -83.34556Coordinates: 41°53′21″N 83°20′44″W / 41.88917°N 83.34556°W / 41.88917; -83.34556
Status	Active
Commission date	1971
Owner(s)	DTE Energy Electric Company
Thermal power station
Primary fuel	Coal
Type	Steam turbine
Power generation
Units operational	4
Nameplate capacity	3,400 megawatts
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The Monroe Power Plant is a coal-fired power plant located in Monroe, Michigan, on the western shore of Lake Erie. It is owned by the DTE Energy Electric Company, a subsidiary of DTE Energy. The plant was constructed in the early 1970s and was completed in 1974. The plant has 4 generating units, each with an output of 850 megawatts. With all four generating units operating, the plant's total output is 3,300 megawatts (3,400 MW total, 100 MW required for the plant to run), the eleventh largest electric plant in the United States. It is the second largest coal-fired plant in the United States after Georgia Power's Plant Bowen near Cartersville, Georgia. The Monroe Power Plant connects to the power grid by numerous 120,000- and 345,000-volt transmission lines, owned and maintained by ITC Transmission. Two of the 345 kV lines going out of the plant interconnect with First Energy in Ohio (Bayshore-Monroe line and the Majestic-Monroe-Allen Junction Line).

The Monroe Power Plant did significant upgrades and maintenance at the facility in late 2007 and 2008. Flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) units, or sulfur-oxide "scrubbers", are in operation on all four of Monroe's generating units. These devices reduce over 95% of the sulfur dioxide (SO
2) emissions.

Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems reduce the amount of NO
x by combining NH
3 with the NO
x over an SCR catalyst to reduce 90% of the NO
x to water and nitrogen. Currently all of the generating units use SCRs.