Plant | EnergyNorthwest.com

Entergy Texas Breaks Ground on New 993-MW Combined Cycle Plant

February 19, 2019

Entergy Texas on February 15 began construction of its first new power plant in 40 years. The Montgomery County Power Station (MCPS), located in Willis, will be a 993-MW combined cycle gas turbine plant, adjacent to the existing Lewis Creek Power Plant.

Entergy Texas is part of Entergy Corporation, which provides power to about 3 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The company in a statement said “the facility will provide a new source of reliable, low-cost and clean energy to meet the growing power demand across Southeast Texas.” The plant is expected to enter commercial operation by mid-2021.

Sallie Rainer, president and CEO of Entergy Texas, at Friday’s groundbreaking said, “Southeast Texas is growing, and Entergy Texas needs to invest now to power that growth. By providing reliable, affordable power, we can meet our customers’ needs today, while laying the foundation for future growth across our region.”

Entergy Texas has said the new plant, with cleaner and more efficient combined cycle technology, will save its customers about $ 1.7 billion in energy costs over the next 30 years.…

‘Technically Sophisticated’ Combined Cycle Plant Comes Online

January 16, 2019

| No Comments

| Industry News

The Lackawanna Energy Center in Pennsylvania entered commercial operation Jan. 15, with the $ 1.5 billion project heralded by its developer, Invenergy, as among the most “technically sophisticated” combined cycle natural gas-fired plants in operation.

The 1,485-MW facility, in the borough of Jessup in Lackawanna County, was completed ahead of schedule and features three General Electric (GE) 7HA.02 high-efficiency, air-cooled natural gas combustion turbines. The facility is expected to provide baseload power to the PJM Interconnection regional transmission organization (RTO) and have the flexibility to respond to spikes in demand, as it balances intermittency on the power grid with the integration of renewables. (A time-lapse video of the plant’s construction is available here.)

“This project is as complicated a combined cycle [plant] as they come,” said Michael Polsky, Chicago-based Invenergy’s founder and CEO, in an interview with POWER. “I think it was pretty remarkable how the Invenergy team and our partners, Kiewit [which build the plant] and GE, did this project, I would say flawlessly.…

Columbia Nuclear Plant Sets Another Generation Record, Credits Good Performance

January 10, 2019

| No Comments

| Industry News

Operators of the Columbia Generating Station have set a new generation record at the nuclear plant 12 miles north of Richland, Wash., sending more than 9.7 million MWh to the Pacific Northwest power grid during 2018.

The single 1,207-MW single GE-built Mark-2 boiling water reactor that is owned and operated by Energy Northwest—which comprises 26 public power member utilities across Washington state—has set new generation records five out of the past seven years.

Because the plant consistently surpassed generation records set first in 2012 (9.3 TWh), then in 2014 (9.5 TWh), and again in 2016 (9.6 TWh), the plant was a POWER magazine Top Plant in 2017. The plant won the award also due in part to an operations overhaul that began in 2009, when Columbia suffered a series of scrams that landed it on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) radar, and led it to vastly improve its performance.

A Remarkable Cost of Power

The company said in a Jan.…

Tenaska Gas-Fired Plant Comes Online in Pennsylvania

January 2, 2019

| No Comments

| Industry News

The Tenaska Westmoreland Generating Station began commercial operation on Dec. 21, the latest natural gas-fired facility to enter the PJM market.

The 940-MW Tenaska plant, located near Smithton in South Huntingdon Township in Westmoreland County in southwest Pennsylvania, was built in just more than two years, though its planning and permitting process took several years due to opposition from local residents.

The plant is part of a move toward more gas-fired power in PJM, the largest competitive wholesale U.S. power market. PJM serves customers in 13 states in the eastern U.S., and the District of Columbia.

Gas-fired power surpassed coal-fired generation as the fuel of choice in PJM in 2015, as the price of natural gas dropped below the cost of coal across the region. According to a recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), “The monthly average cost of Central Appalachian coal in the PJM region averaged $ 2.76 per million British thermal unit (MMBtu) in 2013 and has only slightly increased since then, most recently averaging 3.30/MMBtu in 2017.”…

Dominican Republican to Get Floating Combined Cycle Gas Plant Outfitted with Battery Storage

December 8, 2018

| No Comments

| Industry News

A novel floating power plant that combines a 145-MW gas-fired combined cycle power plant and a battery energy storage system could begin operating in the Dominican Republic by early 2021.

Siemens and the marine arm of Singapore-based ST Engineering on December 3 said they jointly received an order for a SeaFloat barge-mounted power plant from Bermuda-based Seaboard Corp. subsidiary Transcontinental Capital Corp. The independent power producer is developing the Estrella del Mar III project in the Dominican Republic’s capital of Santo Domingo.

The hybrid project is based on Siemens’ SCC-800 2×1 SeaFloat concept. The shipyard-constructed floating power barge includes two Siemens SGT-800 gas turbines and one SST-600 steam turbine. “The gas and steam turbine generation sets are of single lift package design for floating applications utilizing integrated based frame design with three-point mount,” the company said in a news release.

The project also includes a SIESTART solution; Fluence Energy, a joint venture between Siemens and AES, will provide a 5-MW/10-MWh battery energy storage system to provide frequency regulation control.…

Power Plant Control Loop Tuning and Optimization [PODCAST]

December 2, 2018

| No Comments

| Industry News

Optimizing power plant control systems can be challenging, but new tools are available to simplify and improve the process. On this episode of The POWER Podcast, Executive Editor Aaron Larson spoke with Jon Towslee, digital engagement leader for ABB Inc.’s Industrial Automation Power Generation & Water business.

Towslee explained how ABB Ability is focused on improving customers’ businesses by optimizing assets and operator effectiveness, and enhancing top-to-bottom performance. Solutions like the company’s loop performance monitor can be used to identify such things as transmitters that are providing bad data, noisy signal lines, and actuators that aren’t working correctly. Once maintenance crews have all equipment functioning properly, technicians can evaluate process control schemes to ensure they are responding appropriately, which then permits loops to be tuned for optimal performance.

The loop performance monitor evaluates control loops on 17 different parameters. Once individual loops are optimized, higher-level adjustments can be made. Ultimately, the tools allow plant operators to expand boundaries and operate plants more closely to maximum safe operating limits.…