Construction of 99-Megawatt Spiritwood Station Underway

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Reported by Britt Burt, Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Construction of North Dakota's first combined heat and power plant is underway. Great River Energy (Elk River, Minnesota) started construction of the 99-megawatt (MW) Spiritwood station during October 2007. The new plant is part of the Spiritwood Industrial Park, which is a new $500 million complex that will be home to the Spiritwood station, Spirit Ethanol LLC's 100MM gal/yr ethanol plant and Cargill Incorporated's (Wayzata, Minnesota) expanded malt plant.

Construction of the $276 million Spiritwood station is expected to be completed over a 30-month period with commercial operation expected to begin during the first quarter of 2010. The general contractor on the project is NewMech Companies Incorporated (Saint Paul, Minnesota). During the peak of the construction cycle, it is expected that some 480 people will be employed. Once completed the plant is expected to employ 25 people.

Spiritwood will utilize a Babcock & Wilcox circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boiler, a 99-MW Siemens steam turbine generator and three natural-gas-fired package boilers. The CFB boiler will be fueled by beneficiated (upgraded) lignite. About 610,000 tons per year of lignite will be shipped from Great River's beneficiation plant near the Coal Creek power station. When complete the plant will supply 62 MW of base-load capacity for Great River Energy's customers and 37 MW of peak-load capacity for sale to the regional energy market. In addition to generating electricity, the plant will supply 500,000 pounds per hour of process steam to Spirit Ethanol and Cargill.

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