EXC Exelon Corp

By Joshua Jamerson 

Exelon Corp. said two of its nuclear power plants, including one plant it has said it would close if Illinois lawmakers don't provide financial support, failed to secure contracts after a recent round of bidding.

The company on Wednesday reiterated its stance that it would shutter facilities in Clinton, Ill., and its Quad Cities nuclear power plant, where 1,500 people are employed in total, if "adequate" legislation isn't passed during the spring Illinois legislative session, which ends May 31.

Annual capacity auctions are held where power producers bid for long-term contracts to supply electricity. On Wednesday, the company said the Quad Cities plant failed to clear the conditions necessary to secure such contracts from grid operator PJM for the 2019-2020 planning year. Exelon's Three Mile Island nuclear plant also didn't clear the auction. In April, the Clinton facility won contracts for the 2016-17 year, but Exelon has said that the agreed-upon price is "insufficient to cover cash operating costs."

Exelon has said it would work to relocate some of the employees if the plants close.

Exelon and other electricity producers in several states are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in financial support to keep costly nuclear power plants in business. Exelon has said the two plants it could close have lost a combined $800 million in the past seven years.

The utilities claim the nuclear reactors should be given special compensation because they are important to local economies and the electrical grid's stability, and because they don't emit greenhouse gases or other pollutants.

"The capacity market alone can't preserve zero-carbon emitting nuclear plants that are facing the lowest wholesale energy prices in 15 years," Chris Crane, Exelon's chief executive, said Wednesday.

If the legislation Exelon desires doesn't pass, the Clinton plant will close June 1, 2017, and Quad Cities will cease operations a year later.

Exelon has 23 nuclear reactors operating primarily in Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.

Write to Joshua Jamerson at joshua.jamerson@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 25, 2016 09:23 ET (13:23 GMT)

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