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May 17, 2026 - Earlier this year, the Department of Energy quietly amended its emergency order to keep open a Washington state coal plant, changing the grid operators responsible for overseeing the facility. This week, one of those operators asked DOE to remove it from the order.
Gridforce says it's not responsible for dispatching the plant. Its request to DOE injects a new wrinkle into the debate over the future of Centralia Generating Station, a coal plant that had been slated to shut down at the end of last year.
DOE directed Centralia to stay open in December, issuing an emergency order under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. The agency argued that the plant was needed to ensure the reliability of the Northwest’s electricity grid.
But Washington state says it doesn't need the plant, which has not run since DOE issued its order.
The order directed the plant’s owner, TransAlta, to make Centralia available to generate power at the direction of the Bonneville Power Administration and the California Independent System Operator. But DOE amended the order in March to change the grid operators to Gridforce and the Southwest Power Pool, which recently expanded its operations to include parts of the Mountain West.
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