Power plant on River Road now owned by ArcLight Capital Partners. Photo by John Hall, taken from Portland

In our previous newsletter, we reported that last Middletown’s Common Council terminated the tax agreement with NRG (strongly opposed by the Jonah Center and local advocates in a public hearing last April). That tax agreement would have supported a new 375 MW fossil gas turbine generator at a time when the state is trying to wean itself from electricity generated by fossil fuels.

Since that newsletter, we have learned that NRG, in December, closed on its sale of 4.9 gigawatts of generation capacity in New York, New England, and California to ArcLight Capital Partners and its subsidiary, Generation Bridge, for $760 million.

In a press release, ArcLight announced that it does not plan to go head with the 375 MW fossil gas project proposed by NRG 2019. It’s plan, rather, to develop renewable energy and energy storage. The River Road plant in Middletown is an obvious site for a storage facility due to the high voltage transmission line associated with the site and due to the 200 MW of offshore wind currently being developed in Long Island Sound, which will require an updated grid and nearby storage capacity. To read the press release click here: ArcLight Closes Acquisition of 4.9GW Power Generation Portfolio from NRG Energy.