WA Parish Generating Station
The W.A. Parish Generating Station is a 3.65-gigawatt, dual-fired power plant located in unincorporated Thompsons, Texas, the station occupies a 4,664-acre site near Smithers Lake southwest of Houston in Fort Bend County and consists of two four-unit plants; one natural gas and the other coal. With a total installed capacity of 3,653 MW, it is the second largest conventional power station in the US. NRG Energy owns and operates the plant.
The multiple coal mines supply three 124-car trainloads worth of low-sulfur coal to units 5-8 or 36,000 tons daily.
Completed in January 2017, the post-combustion Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project became largest installed on an existing power plant in the world. The system pumps 1.6 million tons of filtered carbon dioxide from unit 8 to the West Ranch Oil Field 82 miles away in Jackson County. Overall as the system is powered by natural gas it will have a net effect of not releasing 785,000 tons of carbon annually. The system cost approximately $1 billion.
Adjacent to Parish Station is the natural gas Brazos Valley Power Plant owned by Calpine Energy which opened in 2003.
