Calpine Completes 550 Megawatt Columbia Energy Center in South Carolina

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Inc.; Houston, Texas). Calpine Corporation (NYSE: CPN) (San Jose, California) is completing construction of the new 550 megawatt (MW) natural gas/oil-fired cogeneration plant Columbia Energy Center in (Plant 1052551 & PEC 16000933) Gaston, South Carolina, on property owned by Eastman Chemical Company. In turn, Calpine will provide Eastman with process steam for polymers production. This is one of the projects that Calpine took over in October of 2000, when they acquired Skygen Energy LLC (Northbrook, Illinois). Skygen had three operating plants, five under construction, ten in late development and an additional sixteen development opportunities.

Construction has been underway at the site since September of 2001 and has taken about 30 months to complete. Sargent & Lundy LLC (Chicago, Illinois) performed engineering and TIC (The Industrial Company) out of Steamboat Springs, Colorado acted as the general contractor for this $260 million job that is expected to be in commercial operation by the second quarter of 2004.

The Columbia Energy Center is in a combined-cycle configuration with two General Electric (GE) MS7001FA combustion turbines, a Toshiba steam turbine generator, and two Nooter/Ericksen duct-fired heat recovery steam generators (HRSG), plus three natural gas/oil-fired auxiliary boilers (two Foster Wheeler each 250,000 lb/hr and a Rentech 350,000 lb/hr). The plant will be primarily natural gas-fired with oil as a back-up. In order to facilitate the use of oil there is a million gallon above ground storage tank on site. Process water for the plant will be treated by a demineralizer system. The boiler units have been outfitted with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) equipment to reduce NOx emissions. The system control operation consists of GE Mark VI, Siemens TXP and Toshiba DHC controls. Operations, maintenance, and administration staffing will require around 24-25 personnel.

This is Calpine's second plant in South Carolina bringing the capacity total generation to 1,390 MW for the state and over 4,700 MW for the Southern Electric Reliability Council (SERC) region.

Calpine is focused on clean, efficient, natural gas-fired generation and is the world's largest producer of renewable geothermal energy. They have launched the largest power development program in North America. To date, the company has over 80 plants and over 22,000 MW of load capacity in operation.

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