Bethlehem Energy Center (BEC) is a 750-MW (nominal) mid-merit merchant plant that entered commercial service in July 2005. It was one of the first plants to be approved and permitted under New York State's Article X siting law.
BEC (Figure 1) is located on the west bank of the Hudson River about 3 miles south of Albany. The plant has a 3 x 3 x 1 combined-cycle configuration: three GE 7FA combustion turbine-generators (CTGs) exhausting at 1,140F to three Nooter/Eriksen heat-recovery steam generators (HRSGs) whose outputs are combined to feed one GE D11 steam turbine-generator.
1. Sitting pretty. The new 750-MW Bethlehem Energy Center, on the west bank of the Hudson River. It replaces the 50-year-old Albany Steam Station—the faded brick building just west of the switchyard, which was reused. Courtesy: PSEG Power
With supplementary firing of the HRSGs by natural gas, the plant's rating rises to 763 MW. The high-, intermediate-, and low-pressure sections of the steam turbine operate at 1,750 psi, 350 to 400 psi, and 80 to 90 psi, respectively. The unit's high-pressure section produces 1 million lb/hr. A 100% steam turbine bypass system facilitates fast plant start-ups with the steam turbine not operating.
The CTGs fire natural gas as their primary fuel and low-sulfur distillate oil as backup. When firing oil, the units are water-injected to minimize their NOx output. The CTGs' inlet air (at a flow of 750,000 cubic ft/min) is evaporatively cooled, and their dry low-NOx combustors reduce emissions of the pollutant to single-digit levels.
Gone but not forgotten
Bethlehem Energy Center was built on the site of the Albany Steam Station, which PSEG acquired from Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. in 2000. Originally rated at 376 MW, the plant had four identical units that entered service between 1952 and 1954 and were designed to burn coal. In 1970, all four units were converted to burn residual fuel oil; in 1981 they were converted again to be able to burn natural gas as well, uprating the plant's capacity to 400 MW. The four 100-MW units were housed in one building and served by two control rooms.
The new plant uses the switchyard of the old plant, which was "abandoned in place" and decommissioned in February 2005. All asbestos has either been removed or encased and tagged, and the first, second, and third floors now are used for storage, the new plant's electrical shop, maintenance shop, and instrumentation and control shop.
When PSEG Power laid up the old plant, a company group dedicated to managing retired assets salvaged and sold everything in it of significant value—stainless steel, titanium condenser tubing, some pumps and motors, pulverizer components, and some step-up transformers. The group also is responsible for maintaining the encapsulated asbestos in the Albany plant in that condition.
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