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POWER Digest (September 2010)

MHI, Foster Wheeler to Support FEED for UK CCS Project. A consortium of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd. on August 5 announced that it had received an order from E.ON UK to support the front-end engineering design (FEED) for a post-combustion carbon dioxide (CO2) capture plant proposed as part of E.ON’s planned 1,600-MW supercritical coal-fired power plant in Kingsnorth, Kent. The proposed project is one of two facilities competing for UK government funds to build an industrial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration plant. It will use MHI’s KM-CDR Process, a CO2 recovery technology, to separate, recover, and compress CO2 from the coal-fired flue gas and store it within a depleted gas reservoir in the North Sea. The overall FEED activities are expected to further develop the project and will involve engineering and design studies. It will be followed by the selection of a competition winner by the UK government.

DOE Funds FutureGen 2.0. Also on August 5, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the award of $1 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding to the FutureGen Alliance, Ameren Energy Resources, Babcock & Wilcox, and Air Liquide Process & Construction Inc. to build FutureGen 2.0. The new project will repower Ameren’s 200-MW Meredosia Unit 4, located near Meredosia, in western Illinois, with advanced oxycombustion technology, which combusts coal in oxygen rather than air.

“We now have tapped into what I think is the cutting edge of coal research,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said when announcing the project in Washington with Chu. The project will be 80% funded by Recovery Act money approved last year, and construction will begin in the spring, Durbin said. Durbin estimated the cost of the repowering work at Ameren’s Meredosia plant at $737 million. The proposal also called for a 175-mile pipeline that moved the collected CO2 to underground storage facilities at the 400-acre site at Mattoon, but Coles County recently declined to participate in the DOE’s revamped project.

Siemens Wins FEED Contract for Texas IGCC Plant. Siemens Energy on August 2 said it had been awarded a front-end engineering design contract by Summit Texas Clean Energy LLC to provide coal gasification and power block technology for the Texas Clean Energy Project. The new 400-MW polygeneration integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) project planned near Odessa, Texas, will use coal as its feedstock. The plant will capture 90% of its CO2 emissions for enhanced oil recovery in the West Texas area.

Siemens will deliver the gasification island technology, which will include two SFG-500 gasifiers. The power block will be based on an SGT6-5000F gas turbine modified to operate on high hydrogen syngas, which will allow the plant to have a very high carbon capture rate of about 3 million tons/year. The power block will include a Siemens SST-900RH steam turbine, air-cooled generators, and SPPA-T3000 controls. Siemens will be working with Fluor Corp. and Linde during the project’s FEED. The project has received a $350 million award under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative, Round 3 to demonstrate the commercial integration of large-scale IGCC with CO2 capture and geologic storage.

Westinghouse to Dismantle Spanish Nuclear Reactor. Westinghouse Electric Co. on July 28 said it has been awarded a contract by Enresa (Empresa Nacional de Residuos Radiactivos) to dismantle the reactor vessel internals at the Jose Cabrera Nuclear Power Station, also known as Zorita, located near Madrid, Spain. The contract includes the up-front engineering studies as well as plant modifications, equipment supply, and loading of primary and secondary waste into multipurpose canisters for the activated material, and into dedicated containers for low- and intermediate-level waste. Westinghouse will be the lead contractor, and MONLAIN will be its main subcontractor. The project began in June 2010 and is expected to take 31 months to complete.

Zorita, a 142-MWe Westinghouse pressurized water reactor operated by Gas Natural Fenosa, was closed by ministerial order in April 2006, after 38 years in operation. In February 2010, Gas Natural Fenosa transferred the plant’s ownership to Enresa, the Spanish agency responsible for radioactive waste management and nuclear plant decommissioning. Zorita will become the second commercial nuclear reactor (after Vandellos Unit 1) to be dismantled in Spain.

GWF to Convert Peaker Plant to Flexible Combined-Cycle Facility. Decisions in two proceedings by the California Public Utilities Commission on July 29 will allow California-based GWF Energy LLC to move forward with plans to convert its Tracy Peaker Plant to a 314-MW flexible, combined-cycle facility. The new natural gas–fired facility will implement a dry cooling technology that uses 97% less water than a conventional water cooling system. The project is scheduled to begin construction in the fourth quarter of this year and has a projected completion date of summer 2012. The project received the necessary environmental permitting approvals for the conversion from the California Energy Commission in March 2010.

GE Signs Two Contracts for Saskatchewan Gas-Fired Plants. GE in August said it had signed two contracts worth $87 million with Toronto independent power producer Northland Power to supply power generation equipment and commissioning services for two natural gas–fired power plants. Northland Power was recently selected by Saskatchewan utility SaskPower to provide 261 MW of baseload power and 87 MW of peaking power. GE will supply its 7FA heavy-duty gas turbine for the North Battleford baseload power plant and two LM6000-PF aeroderivative gas turbines for the Spy Hill peaking plant. Based on the current projected supply gap, SaskPower says it will have to rebuild, replace, or acquire approximately 4,100 MW by 2030, resulting in the need for significant new generation and transmission infrastructure.

ABB Wins $700M Offshore Wind Power Connection Order. ABB said on July 20 it won an order worth $700 million from German transmission grid operator transpower to supply an 800-MW power link that will connect more offshore wind farms in the DolWin1cluster, located in the North Sea to the mainland German grid.

ABB said it will deploy its HVDC Light (high-voltage direct current) transmission technology to transmit power from the 400-MW Borkum West II wind farm and other wind farms to be developed nearby. The wind farms will be connected to an offshore HVDC converter station, which will transmit electricity to the onshore HVDC station at Dörpen, on the northwest coast of Germany via 165 km of underwater and underground DC cables. The Dörpen/West converter station will in turn feed AC power to the mainland grid.

This is the largest power transmission order in ABB’s history. At 320-kV, the project will use the highest voltage level of extruded cable ever used for HVDC, ABB said.

—Sonal Patel is POWER’s senior writer.

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