Design Underway for University of Texas Turbine Addition

---

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Design is currently underway for a proposed $37 million combustion turbine addition to be installed at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) in the Hal C Weaver Power Plant in Austin, Texas.

Construction plans call for the replacement of an existing 12.5-megawatt (MW) Westinghouse combustion turbine with a 30-megawatt (MW) combustion turbine which will be attached to a 2,000 lbs/hr heat recovery steam generation unit (HRSG). UT is still trying to determine which option and technology would be feasible at this time. Some options it is considering are installations of two 15 MW units which could be either Solar Turbine or Pratt & Whitney units or just one Westinghouse unit. They expect to make a decision later this summer. The project also calls for the installation of a DA tank, replacement of an old wood, 50,000 gallons per minutes (gpm) cooling tower with a 40,000 gpm fiberglass cooling tower. The majority of the original equipment was installed in 1965. Currently budgeted at $28 million, the 30 MW combustion turbine addition project is expected to actually cost around $37 million.

Carter & Burgess Incorporated, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, is providing engineering services for the proposed turbine addition. Part of its responsibility is to determine which cost effective technology would be feasible for installing and provide the best option.

A construction management at risk firm (CMR) will be selected in November to handle construction for the proposed turbine addition. Construction is anticipated to begin in the spring of 2008 with completion slated for 2009.

The University of Texas at Austin, founded in 1883, is one of the largest universities in the United States situated on a 350-acre campus consisting of roughly 21,000 faculty and staff and approximately 50,000 students located in 16 colleges and schools. Its annual research funding exceeds $400 million and includes over 3,500 research projects and 90 research units. Presently, over 400 patents have been awarded to the university. The university is currently ranked as one of the best public research universities. The Hal C. Weaver Power Plant provides electricity and steam for the UT-Austin campus. It currently serves 160 buildings providing 1,146,000 lbs/hr heating capacity, 40,800 tons of cooling capacity and 88 MW of generation capacity.

View Plant Profile – 1032608
View Project Report - 01011000

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) provides marketing communication services ranging from industrial database solutions to market forecasting, custom analytics, and specialty promotions that support high-level image campaigns.