NRG sees Texas WA Parish 5 coal unit back soon

HOUSTON, April 13 (Reuters) - NRG Energy Inc's (NRG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 649-megawatt Unit 5 at the WA Parish power station in Texas will return to service soon after a maintenance outage, the company told Texas regulators in a report filed Saturday.

The company did not say when the unit shut.

The 3,681 MW WA Parish station is located in Thompsons in Fort Bend County, about 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Houston.

There are two 174 MW natural gas-fired Units 1 and 2, the 278 MW gas-fired Unit 3, the 552 MW gas-fired Unit 4, the 649 MW coal/gas-fired Unit 5, the 659 MW coal/gas-fired Unit 6, the 572 MW coal/gas-fired Unit 7, the 610 MW coal/gas-fired Unit 8 and a 13 MW gas turbine at the station.

Units 1 and 2 entered service in 1958, Unit 3 in 1961, Unit 4 in 1968, Unit 5 in 1977, Unit 6 in 1978 and Unit 7 in 1980 and Unit 8 in 1982.

One MW powers about 500 homes in Texas.

NRG, of Princeton, New Jersey, owns and operates about 25,000 MW of generating capacity and markets energy commodities in the United States, Germany and Australia. (Reporting by Eileen O'Grady; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)