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- Only one-third of each lump of coal burned in the boiler actually goes to make electricity. One-third of the coal is released as gas up the stack and one-third is expended as thermal pollution in the vapor cloud above the cooling tower.
- At peak, the Samuel A. Carlson Electric Generating Station can consume up to 400 tons (800,000) pounds of coal per day.
- When the coal silo and the four bunkers inside the plant are full, the system stores 10,400,000 pounds of coal. That's enough coal for 10 continuous days of operation at peak output.
- Each of the four boilers contains over 35,000 feet of tubing (that's nearly 7 miles of tubing) each!
- All of these tubes are suspended from the top of the building, nearly nine stories above ground. The weight of the water filling the tubes in the boiler, in combination with the expansion of the tubes due to heating, cause the boiler to "grow" downward, as much as six inches.
- Each of the two condensers for the steam turbines contains 4,000 brass tubes 20 feet long (80,000 feet or 15 miles)!
- All those miles of tubing require a great deal of coolant water. In fact, at 42,000 gallons per minute, the coolant pumps could fill an Olympic size swimming pool with water in just six minutes!
- The BPU can evaporate up to 1,000,000 gallons of water each day when running at full load (53.75 megawatts). That may seem like a lot of water, but remember that Chautauqua Lake alone contains 81.8 billion gallons of water that is continually being replenished through the hydrologic cycle.
- The two turbine generators at the Samuel A. Carlson Electric Generating Station produce 28.75 and 25 megawatts at 13,800 volts. The total output capable at the plant is 53.75 megawatts - enough electricity to light over one half million 100 watt light bulbs simultaneously.
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