Prairie State Energy Station [1] in Southern Illinois is one of these plants. Roughly 200 municipalities bought into it ~10-12 years ago with the promise of locking in cheap electricity for decades. Now, those who own shares of it (both municipalities and electric co ops [2]) are kicking and screaming that they're entitled to continue to operate the plant because it would raise electrical rates for their citizens to retire it early.
"Illinois lawmakers are still debating a statewide energy proposal that would shutter the state’s coal-fired power plants by 2035. A local utility cooperative is asking its members to lobby lawmakers to keep it open.
Illinois Electric Cooperative has issued letters to their members asking to keep the plants open because they say it will cost utility rate payers more money and provide an unreliable electric grid of power.
IEC’s general manager Randy Long says it will also saddle the state with significant outstanding debt: “We believe it is probably going to reduce grid reliability and it’s going to cause good energy jobs to leave the State of Illinois along with the tax base to neighboring states and it’s going to increase our [utility] rates also. In 2035, the Prairie State plant will still have about $188 million worth of debt, and that is still going to have to be paid off. We’ll no longer be getting energy from that plant either, so we’ll have to replace that energy from another source. We are just very concerned about that – the increased costs to our members and also the reliability on the grid, which is really in the forefront after the blackouts we have just heard about in Texas and California recently.”"
(my note: it has been proven that the blackouts in California and Texas were not caused by renewables, but by grid mismanagement; solar and wind backed by storage is also cheaper than coal, so this is clearly not about cost but maintaining the status quo)
"PSEC started delivering electricity in 2012 at prices well above market rates. Some of its investors resell the energy at a loss, some raise consumer rates, and two backed out of the project. PSEC's original $2 billion estimated cost attracted municipal electric utilities to invest and to sign 28 year contracts. However, as of early 2010 the estimated cost had increased to $4.4 billion, requiring investors to borrow more money and raising the projected cost of electricity to undesirable levels. Peabody in response capped construction costs at "approximately $4 billion" excluding some costs such as coal development and transmission lines. In January 2013, with many municipalities adversely impacted by the high prices, the SEC subpoenaed information from Peabody. In a bid to exit its share of the Prairie State project, the City of Hermann, MO filed a lawsuit in March, 2015 against the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission and the Missouri Public Energy Pool, claiming that its share of $1.5 billion in debt issued to support Prairie State imposed an unconstitutionally high level of debt on the city.
Peabody divested its 5.06% stake in the project in 2016, accepting $57 million for its original investment of nearly $250 million. The buyer was Wabash Valley Power Association, a Midwest cooperative."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_State_Energy_Campus
[2] https://wlds.com/rural-electric-coops-face-uncertainty-with-...