In ancient Egyptian mythology, the phoenix was a beautiful bird with red and gold plumage that built a pyre of cinnamon twigs at the end of its life and burned itself into ashes. From those ashes another, young phoenix arose to begin a new 500-year lifecycle.
Southern California Edison's (SCE) Mountainview Power Plant (Figure 1), about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, may not last 500 years like a phoenix, but it was resurrected after having been abandoned for two years. On the final day of 2005, three and a half months ahead of the original schedule, the second unit of the 1,054-MW plant was deemed "substantially complete"—a real feat, considering the number of hurdles thrown in front of the project team.
1. Lazarus project. Southern California Edison's Mountainview Power Plant, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, added 1,054 MW of much-needed capacity to the Inland Empire. Courtesy: Bechtel Power
Coincidentally, on the very day (December 31, 2005) that Mountainview began bringing much-needed capacity to California's Inland Empire—the fastest-growing area of SCE's 11-county service territory—the 1,540-MW Mohave Generating Station (56% owned by SCE) closed its doors for the last time.
Mountainview is a critical generating source in this power-short region of the country. On the afternoon of July 20, 2005, SCE customers used more electricity than at any time in the utility's 120-year history: 21,122 MW. The following afternoon (July 21), that record fell again as the utility's customers used 812 MW more than the day before—roughly the capacity of a typical, big power plant.
Seeing this growth in demand coming, SCE jumped at the opportunity to bring on-line more than 1 gigawatt of critically needed power relatively quickly, by taking over and completing a project begun by two previous owners. Although several independent power producers were unhappy with this arrangement, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission, and other regulators understood the urgency and gave the project resuscitation a thumbs-up. Thus the Mountainview power plant became California's first utility-developed power plant in 15 years (SCE has no plans to construct any more plants).
Mountainview Power Company LLC, the owner and operator of the plant, is a wholly owned subsidiary of SCE that sells the plant's output to its parent under a power-purchase agreement. Bechtel Power Corp. provided engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services. The post-suspension EPC project cost represented about $460 million of the total project price tag of $600 million.
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