Jeffrey Energy Center

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Jeffrey Energy Center (Jeffrey EC) is a sub-bituminous coal-fired electric energy center located seven miles (11 km) northwest of St. Marys, Kansas. Jeffrey EC is jointly owned by Westar Energy, Topeka, Kansas and Aquila Corp., Kansas City, Missouri. Jeffrey EC is composed of three (3) separate 800 megawatt units providing a maximum rated energy center output of 2400 megawatts. Unit 1 began operation in 1978, unit 2 in 1979 and unit 3 in 1983.

Jeffrey EC is a typical modern coal-fired energy center. Its primary mission is to convert the chemical energy available from its Wyoming Powder River Basin sub-bituminous coal supply into electric energy.

Coal is delivered to Jeffrey EC by a unit train. A unit train contains about 110 cars, constructed of aluminum to conserve weight, and is approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) long.

Jeffrey EC burns the coal delivered by about 11 miles of coal train cars each week. The heating value of this coal is about 8,400 BTU/lb (19.5 MJ/kg) and at full load Jeffrey EC burns about 3,000,000 pounds (1.4 Gg) of coal per hour.

The size of each boiler at Jeffrey EC is about 3.3 million boiler horsepower (32 GW). There are three boilers, making the total boiler rating of this energy station about 10,000,000 boiler horsepower (100 TW).

The overall efficiency of the conversion process is about 33%, or about 1/3 of the coals available chemical energy is converted to electric energy. The remainder of the energy (2/3) is rejected to the environment as low-grade waste heat with poor thermodynamic availability.

Steam generating (Nuclear, Gas, Coal, Geothermal, and Solar Furnace) energy centers, like Jeffrey, operate their steam plant on the Rankine cycle.