POWER magazine's Top Plants of 2006

On the following pages, we introduce the magazine's 12 Top Plants of 2006. Among this year's winners are two solar energy plants and another that marries fuel cells with heat and waste gas recovery. As those projects make clear, a plant doesn't have to be big to earn kudos from us. What we typically like are plants that showcase a design or technology innovation, push the efficiency envelope, or tread lightly on the environment. Congratulations to the winners!

Every power project tracks a unique course to a common goal—commercial operation. Invested in each project are the blood, sweat, and tears of its development, design, and start-up teams—not to mention a few years of their lives. Our job at POWER is to share your experiences (good and bad), especially on projects that have unique features, notable characteristics, or just a great story that the rest of the industry should hear. Typically, engineers are great at building and operating equipment but not very good at tooting their own horn. That's where we come in.

 

The Top Plants selection process begins with a request. Earlier this year we issued a call for nominations via ads in POWER and our POWERnews biweekly industry newsletter. (Visit our web site, www.powermag.com, to subscribe to the newsletter; it's free.) More than 100 nominations, representing a wide range of plant types and technologies, were received from all segments of the industry, ranging from plant managers and engineers to equipment suppliers. POWER's editors then shrunk the list to a dozen finalists, researched the projects, interviewed the people who contributed to their success, and wrote articles on the plants listed below.

This year, we also reached out to a number of users groups for nominations. One of our Top Plants—TXU Corp.'s Monticello Steam Electric Station—also is the PRB Coal Users' Group's 2006 Plant of the Year. Next year we plan to solicit nominations from even more users' groups. If you know a deserving project that is expected to come on-line by July 2007, check out our web site for information on how and when to nominate it.