El Paso Electric's Newman Unit 5 Project Nears Completion

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--El Paso Electric Company (NYSE:EE) (El Paso, Texas) recently announced earnings for the first quarter of the 2009 fiscal year. Net income fell from $14.5 million in 1Q08 to $9.6 million in 1Q09, a decline of 34%. "During the first quarter of 2009, our earnings decreased primarily due to significant reduction in off-systems sales margins and as a result of increased interest expense on our long-term debt," said David Stevens, Director and CEO of the company, in a conference call regarding the earnings. Stevens added that while the company was not pleased with earnings performance, El Paso Electric was pleased with the progress made on various power projects.

Industrial Info is currently monitoring more than $320 million of El Paso Electric's projects at the Newman power plant in El Paso. The plant is currently adding natural-gas-fired simple-cycle combustion turbines to create Newman Unit 5. Construction of this phase of the project is scheduled to be complete within the next few weeks, with commercial operation beginning by October. In early 2010, the units will be converted to function in a combined-cycle generating system with the addition of a heat recovery steam turbine/generator. In total, the two-phase project will add 288 MW of power to the Newman station. The conversion process should be wrapped up in the second quarter of 2011.

"In combined-cycle mode, Newman 5 will be the most efficient gas-fired unit in our generation fleet and will provide added fuel savings to our customers due to that increased efficiency. The addition of Newman 5 will improve the overall reliability of our system and enable us to service our growing customer base," said Stevens. PB Power Incorporated (San Francisco, California) is acting as engineer on both projects. Information on this and other projects can be found in Industrial Info's North American Industrial Database.

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