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.…

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