Calpine Plans 1,500 MW Additional Generation at Plants in Pennsylvania, Texas, Minnesota

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Texas-based Calpine Corporation (NYSE:CPN) (Houston, Texas) is looking to increase power plant capacities in Pennsylvania, Texas and Minnesota to increase generation capacity by about 1,500 megawatts (MW) by the spring of 2018.

The largest of these projects is planned at the York Energy Center in Delta, Pennsylvania. Calpine is looking to construct a combined cycle addition in a 2-on-1 configuration. The power block will feature a natural gas-fired combined cycle power block consisting of two 227-MW General Electric (GE) (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut) MS7001FA.05 natural gas-fired combustion turbines with duct-fired heat recovery steam generators, and a 212-MW GE steam turbine generator. The $760 million project will increase capacity at the plant by 760 MW. Construction would begin in the summer of 2015 and be complete by fourth-quarter 2017.

The second largest project is a $390 million expansion of the Guadalupe Generating Station in Marion, Texas. This project will increase the plant's capacity by 470 MW through the construction of natural gas-fired simple-cycle peaking unit addition utilizing two 235-MW GE MS7001FA combustion turbines. Even though this project has the same projected start date as the York Energy Center project (summer 2015), it will be done much sooner--by fourth-quarter 2015.

The smallest of the three planned expansions is slated for the Mankato Energy Center in Mankato, Minnesota. Calpine plans to add a Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany) SGT6-5000F natural gas-fired combustion turbine generator equipped with a Nooter/Eriksen heat recovery steam generator to convert the Mankato Energy Center from a one-on-one combined cycle configuration to a two-on-on configuration. The $250 million project will increase the plant's generation capacity by more than 300 MW and make it the largest combined-cycle natural gas power generator in the state. The project is expected to kick off in the summer of 2016 and be completed in less than two years. In an interview with a local news program, Mankato Energy Center Plant Manager Dave Jackson said, "The plant was always designed to be a two-by-one facility, meaning two combustion turbines and one steam turbine. It was initially built with one combustion turbine and steam turbine and then really awaiting the need in Minnesota for the additional power."

Calpine plans to start a total of 19 projects in the next two years. In addition to the three expansions, Calpine will perform 16 maintenance outages. Industrial Info clients can view all the projects by searching for Calpine Corporation in the Plant Owner field of the PECWeb Project Search online database.

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