Calpine Testing 600 Megawatt Riverside Energy Center in Wisconsin

---

Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Inc.; Houston, Texas). Rock River Energy LLC, a subsidiary of Calpine Corporation (NYSE: CPN) (San Jose, California) is completing construction of the new 600 megawatt (MW) natural gas/oil-fired cogeneration plant, Riverside Energy Center in (Plant 1516530 & PEC 19000887) Beloit, Rock County Wisconsin. 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 2002 and has taken about 20 months to complete. The engineering was performed by Parsons Power Group (Reading, Pennsylvania). The construction was conducted by a joint venture of The Industrial Company (TIC; Steamboat Springs, Colorado) and The Boldt Company (Appleton, Wisconsin). Construction is almost complete and testing has started on this $350 million job that is expected to be in commercial operation by June, 2004.

The Riverside Energy Center is in a combined-cycle configuration with two General Electric (GE) MS7001FA combustion turbines, a Siemens Westinghouse HMN condensing steam turbine/generator, and two Nooter/Ericksen duct-fired heat recovery steam generators (HRSG). The plant will be primarily natural gas-fired with oil as a back-up. Dry Low NOx combustors are on the combustion turbines and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) units are in the HRSG’s. Process water for the plant will be treated by a demineralizer system. Operations, maintenance, and administration staffing will require around 24-25 personnel.

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.

Click on the following link to view Industrialinfo.com's new 2004 Power Industry Forecast.