Commercial Operation Scheduled for High Desert Energy Project

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Incorporated; Houston, Texas). The High Desert Energy Project is being prepared for full operation to occur during the first week of April. The estimated $225-million, 850 megawatt combined-cycle plant is being built on an 25-acre site in Victorville, San Bernardino, California about seventy-five miles northeast of the Los Angeles area, on a portion of the Southern California Logistics Airport, formerly known as George Air Force Base.

The project includes of three Westinghouse 501FD combustion turbine generators, paired with three Alstom heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs), and a Toshiba steam turbine. Construction on the plant started in April 2001.

Natural gas will be the plant's primary fuel, which will be transported to the facility by a 32-mile, 24-inch diameter pipeline, constructed by Kern River Gas Transmission Company (Salt Lake City, Utah), which owns and operates natural gas pipelines between southwestern Wyoming and southern California. Kern River is a subsidiary of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company (Des Moines, Iowa), a privately owned global provider of energy services.

The High Desert Energy Project will obtain its water supply for the cooling tower from the Mojave Water Agency, which is feed by the State Water Project. Eighty-five percent of the water usage is evaporative loss from the cooling tower. The rest of the water is demineralized and used as boiler make up water and for evaporative coolers.

Kiewit Industrial Company (Omaha, Nebraska) was chosen as the project's turnkey contractor. Kiewit is one of the largest organizations in the construction industry.

The project is owned by the High Desert Power Project Limited Liability Company (LLC), a subsidiary of Constellation Energy Group (NYSE: CEG) (Baltimore, Maryland), a holding company that includes a group of energy businesses focused on merchant generation, and wholesale power marketing.