I think it will be good for the lake, especially with the plant not running consistently the last 6 years. I bet the grass makes a rebound now that they aren't worried about it getting into the intake. The cold side was so good back when it had grass. It will be fun to fish year round.

There was some talk of part of Monticello being closed for some sort of construction a few weeks ago
Any truth to that.

Monticello, Big Brown and Sandow will all be shut down come January unless ERCOT says no. Martin Creek has a few more years if all goes well but ya never know these days. Hate seeing my friends lose their jobs.

Coal regs certainly played a role but the expanded use of fracking and the resulting increase in natural gas supply and cheaper natural gas prices drove much of this. Plants that were too expensive to convert to gas or could not burn coal and gas were doomed. Same will happen with wind farms as current components age out and they cannot be economically refurbished/replaced.

^^^^^^^ What he said ^^^^^^^ You hit the nail on head.

There are rumors that Luminant's plant on Lake Ray Hubbard is being brought back online pretty soon. Lots of stuff going on at the plant lately. Any insight from the community?

I'm sad.

[/quote] Coal regs certainly played a role but the expanded use of fracking and the resulting increase in natural gas supply and cheaper natural gas prices drove much of this. Plants that were too expensive to convert to gas or could not burn coal and gas were doomed. Same will happen with wind farms as current components age out and they cannot be economically refurbished/replaced. [/quote]
They will have to completely get rid of production tax credits for it to happen to wind farms, currently I know of several farms that are already upgrading on the farm. Basically decommissioning / tearing down the old turbines and building new ones right beside them. New technology will increase MW output and drastically increase revenue with PTC's.

This partially true. When Obama put the regulations in he also put in the action to pay the difference between what it cost to use gas versus coal and tax savings to change plants from coal to gas it would all have to be reversed and that cost money. Coal is still cheaper if its one to one and no government help. Gas has to get to about 1.70 to 2.00 per thousand to equal the price of gas versus coal. They can not use gas without the payments from the government and come out. The biggest problem for the coal plants is these are presidents using the pen and the next one may reverse Trumps decision so its not worth the added expense to change back just to lose it again next president. I think if Trump could have put it through congress then the coal plants would come back.

Its all about money. Remember when Harvey came along and we had the gas panic. Well gas here in Graham went to $2.55. Now its been 2 months and every person in the state knows there wasn't a gasoline shortage, gas is still $2.50 here. Supply and demand they say. BS But back to the plants being shut down. They will take over 4,000 MWs of electricity off the market. H'mmm now we are short on power so they can charge more for it because of supply and demand. Does this sound familiar? When your electric bill goes up next year remember I told you so.

But we aren't short on power, or ERCOT would not sign off on this deal. ERCOT has over 77,000 MW's of capacity for summer peak demands. Record peak demand was 69,877 MW's in 2015. With cheaper natural gas and more wind power being installed yearly, it kind of makes sense that some of the coal plants become too expensive to keep up and running. I mean it sucks for the lake and fishing, but back to what you said 'its all about money'.

Last Friday 10/6 eve they still had signs NOT TO GO NORTH OF 127 bridge. Not sure as of now...

I�m in SPP. They run us up and down, up and down constantly.. you can look up demands on their website