Athens Generating and Sister Power Plants Change Ownership and Complete Final Testing for Commercial Start-Up During the Fourth Quarter

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Athens Generating Company LP (Athens, New York), a subsidiary GenHoldings I LLC, which is a subsidiary of newly renamed National Energy & Gas Transmission Incorporated (NEGT), formally PG&E National Energy Group (Bethesda, Maryland), is preparing for commercial start-up later this month (Plant 1032864, PEC 14001280) of a $550 Million project in Athens, New York.

National Energy & Gas Transmission is expected to transfer ownership of GenHoldings I LLC, to MACH Gen LLC, a transition company created by the lenders led by French bank Societe Generale (F.SGF). The transfer is expected to occur as early as the first week of December to avoid default on the loans used to build the plants. GenHoldings I LLC is constructing the Athens Project and is also developing three other power plants, which are involved in the transfer.

The other three plants that will be included in this transaction are the 1,170-Megawatt Covert plant (Plant 1037954, PEC 18001097) located in Michigan, the 1,092-Megawatt Harquahala plant (Plant 1044946, PEC 43000250) in Arizona, and the 380-Megawatt Millenium plant (Plant 1029379) in Massachusetts.

The Covert generating plant is undergoing testing and should be operational by December. The Harquahala project is in final testing and should be operational by late this month. The Millennium plant became operational in 2001.

Two other NEGT plants are slated for transfer in December to lenders led by Citibank, a subsidiary of Citigroup Incorporated (NYSE: C) (New York, New York). Those plants are the 1,121-Megawatt La Paloma plant (Plant 1035651, PEC 06002636) located in California, which started operations in January of 2003. and the 840-Megawatt Lake Road plant (Plant 1034367, PEC 36000183) located in Connecticut, which started operations in April of 2002.

Construction for the Athens project began in May 2001 and was completed in Mid-July 2003. The new plant should be ready for commercial start-up by Late October 2003.

The plant will consist of three 245-Megawatt Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation W501G combustion turbine generators equipped with evaporative inlet air coolers. Each combustion turbine generator will have a Nooter Erikson heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) attached to it, equipped with duct burners and selective catalytic reduction (SCR). The steam generated by the HRSGs will be used to drive three 141-Megawatt Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation condensing steam turbine generators, all of which will operate in a combined-cycle configuration generating a total of, 1,080-Megawatts of power.

The Athens Generating Station will interconnect to the power grid at Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation's transmission line number 91 at the Leeds Substation, located approximately 2000 feet southeast of the new power station. A 345kV double circuit transmission line will connect it to the existing substation.

The engineering and general construction contract was awarded to Bechtel Power Corporation. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Bechtel is a global engineering-construction organization, providing premier technical, management, and directly related services to develop, manage, engineer, build, and operate installations for customers worldwide.