General Electric reportedly plans to demolish the 750 MW gas-fired Inland Empire Energy Center in California because the plant is no longer economically viable compared with renewable energy.

The plant uses two GE H-Class turbines, which the company told the Reuters news agency is legacy technology that has been supplanted by an HA model, which uses different technology.

The steam-cooled H-Class design proved troublesome, taking hours to start, suffering technical problems and selling poorly.

The Inland Empire Energy Center in 2015. Source: oohlongjohnson via Wikimedia Commons“We have made the decision to shut down operation of the Inland Empire Power Plant, which has been operating below capacity for several years, effective at the end of 2019,” GE told Reuters. The plant “is powered by a legacy gas turbine technology … and is uneconomical to support further.”

Reuters said that in a filing with the California Energy Commission, GE said the plant is “not designed for the needs of the evolving California market, which requires fast-start capabilities to satisfy peak demand periods.”

GE’s newer HA turbine can start in under an hour, making it better able to meet fluctuating supplies of wind and solar power. The large market for the H turbine that GE anticipated “did not develop and has resulted in an orphan technology installation,” the filing said.

It added that GE will no longer support or make replacement parts for the H turbine. The only other plant to use GE H-Class turbines is at Baglan Bay in Wales.

California regulators approved the Inland Energy Center in Riverside County in 2003 and the plant opened in 2009. One of the two Inland Empire turbines was mothballed in 2017, cutting the plant’s output to about 376 MW.

GE reportedly will sell the California power plant site to a company that makes battery storage technology.