TVA on track building new Cumberland Natural Gas Power Plant southeast of Clarksville | PHOTOS

CUMBERLAND CITY, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – The Tennessee Valley Authority is making steady progress on converting the Cumberland Fossil Plant into the new Cumberland Natural Gas Plant southwest of Clarksville.

The natural gas plant at 455 Old Scott Road is under construction near the Fossil Plant, or “steam plant,” which uses coal to create energy and has been in operation since 1973. As TVA makes the change to natural gas, the plan is to decommission one of the coal-fired units in 2026 and the other in 2028.

Work started around two years ago on the $2.1 billion natural gas plant, with the facility scheduled to be online in late 2026. The plant will receive the natural gas from a 32-mile, 30-inch gas pipeline running through Dickson, Houston and Stewart counties.

At this time, there are close to 1,900 workers employed at the plant, which includes 247 TVA staff members and just over 450 subcontractors.

Scott Fiedler with TVA Media Relations, said what is happening in Cumberland City is American energy in progress. “These are the men and women out there that are powering America, going to feed American families, power American jobs and American industry,” Fiedler said. Fiedler added that energy matters, we need more of it, and TVA is building it.

When the state-of-the-art natural gas facility goes live, the 1,450-megawatt plant will be able to power 840,000 homes and ensure the region has the electricity needed for the region to continue growing.

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Steam plant history

The Cumberland Fossil Plant, commonly called the “steam plant,” sits on about 1,425 acres just over the Montgomery County line in Stewart County, about 20 miles southwest of Clarksville on state Highway 149. Construction of the plant began in 1968, and the plant has been in operation since 1973, according to the TVA website. The two 1,000-foot-tall chimneys, built in 1970, were two of the tallest in the world.

The plant has employed as many as 400 people, according to previous reports, and it produces almost 2,500 megawatts of power, making it more powerful than even some nuclear plants. But that power has come at a price in pollution. In 2016, the Cumberland Fossil Plant ranked as the No. 3 air polluter in the nation, with a combination of greenhouse gases and Toxics Release Inventory emissions, and the worst mercury polluter in the country among coal-fired power plants, according to Leaf-Chronicle archives.

The new gas-fired plant will supply 1,450 megawatts of power by the time the first coal-fired unit is retired by the end of 2026. That’s just over half of the power the 2,500 megawatts the fossil plant currently produces, but TVA plans to integrate 10,000 megawatts of solar onto the system by 2035.

Chris Smith contributed to this report.

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