Prairie State Energy Campus is a standalone, technologically-advanced energy campus located in southern Illinois. Operated by Prairie State Generating Company (PSGC), the energy campus comprises a 1,600 MW coal-fired supercritical power plant, and an adjacent underground coal mine. Six public power entities and three rural electric generation and transmission cooperatives own Prairie State. All of Prairie State’s member-owners are community-owned or member-owned, non-profit electricity suppliers that are committed to providing clean, reliable, and affordable baseload electricity to 2.5 million customers in hundreds of communities in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions across eight states. As might be expected, its unusual origins raised the stakes considerably for engineers charged with designing the new plant’s operation model.