The city-owned utility in Owensboro, Kentucky, received about 10 bids in response to a recent request for proposals to buy 250,000-500,000 st of high-sulfur coal for 2015 and 500,000-750,000 st in 2016-2019, a utility official said Monday.
"Some look good and some are kind of hopin' and wishin'," Jim Roberts, manager of fuels and byproducts for Owensboro Municipal Utilities, said about offers to the formal solicitation, which closed on May 29.
Roberts said in an interview that OMU plans to ask the Owensboro City Commission on June 19 for permission to negotiate a potential sales contract or contracts with a handful of finalists. He declined to identify any of the bidders.
OMU expects to enter into a formal purchase agreement or agreements this summer, he added, well in advance of the scheduled start of deliveries on June 2, 2015.
The coal will be burned in OMU's 425-MW Elmer Smith power plant along the Ohio River, just east of Kentucky's third-largest city.
An approximately 290-MW unit at the plant resumed commercial operations last week following a scheduled maintenance outage that lasted longer than expected.
Altogether, OMU burns about 1.3 million st of high-sulfur steam coal annually.
