Construction Underway on 750-Megawatt Spruce 2 in Texas

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Construction started last week on the first coal-fired power unit to begin construction in Texas in fifteen years. CPS Energy (San Antonio City Public Service) started construction of a $1 billion unit addition at its J K Spruce Power Station located at the Calaveras Lake Complex Southeast of San Antonio, Texas. The construction phase of the project is expected to employ 900 workers.

The first unit at the plant, J K Spruce Unit 1, commenced commercial operation in 1992. Electricity produced from Unit 1 is produced utilizing a 546-megawatt General Electric steam turbine/generator driven by steam from a 3.817 million pounds pre hour (MM lbs/hr) coal-fired Alstom boiler. Spruce is one of three power plants located at Calaveras Lake. The other two plants that make up the complex are the 892-megawatt coal-fired J T Deely Station and the 892-megawatt natural gas-fired O W Sommers Station.

Construction of Spruce 2 will be performed by Calaveras Power Partners, LLC, which is a consortium of Black & Veatch (Overland Park, Kansas), Zachry Construction Corporation (San Antonio, Texas), TIC (Steamboat Springs, Colorado) and Utility Engineering (Denver, Colorado), a Zachry Group Company. Construction is scheduled for completion during 2010. Major equipment for the new unit includes an Alstom coal tangential-fired boiler and Toshiba steam turbine/generator set. CPS will spend over $200 million on environmental controls for the new unit including a wet flue gas desulfurization (WFGD) scrubber, selective catalytic reduction (SCR) unit and a fabric filter baghouse.

The new unit is necessary to meet electricity demands of the Greater San Antonio area, which is increasing by about 3% per year. Also, several of CPS Energy’s existing units are due for retirement over the next few years. In addition to the Calaveras Lake Complex, CPS owns the 1,214-megawatt V H Braunig Power Station, the 542-megawatt Arthur Von Rosenburg Station, the 182-megawatt Leon Creek Station and a 40% interest in the South Texas Nuclear Project.

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