InterGen Schedules Commercial Operations for Mississippi Magnolia Power Plant in June 2003

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InterGen's Magnolia Energy Project is scheduled for commercial operation by the summer of this year. The facility is a combined-cycle plant located near the town of Ashland in Benton County, Mississippi. With a 1,040-megawatt (MW) total capacity and $400-million total investment value, the facility consists of four 170-megawatt General Electric (GE-7FA) combustion turbine generators, four Foster Wheeler heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs), and two 180-megawatt Alstom steam turbine generators.

The Magnolia Energy Project began construction in the summer of 2001 and will be using natural gas as its primary fuel. About ninety-five percent of the proposed power plants to be built in the last few years are gas-fired plants based on combustion turbine technology.

Combined-cycle plants have two cycles for generating electricity. In the first cycle, natural gas and compressed air from a combustion turbine compressor are mixed and burned in a combustion chamber. The energy released during the combustion is used to turn a turbine. The turbine drives a generator to make electricity. Exhaust gas from the combustion turbines are passed through heat recovery steam generators. The heat captured from these exhaust gases is used to convert water into steam. In the second cycle, the steam from the heat recovery steam generators is sent to turn a steam turbine. The steam turbine in turn drives an electric generator to make additional electricity.

Combined-cycle plants are cheaper and faster to build, with low investment cost, quick start up, and can be designed to run as base-load or peaking generating stations. The combustion turbines can also be operated in the simple-cycle mode, separated from the heat recovery steam generator.

Bechtel Power (San Francisco, California), a global engineering, construction, development and management organization, is building the facility under a turnkey contract. El Paso Merchant will provide energy management services for the project.

The Magnolia Energy Project will be owned and operated by InterGen North America (Houston, Texas), a joined-venture of Shell and Bechtel Enterprises.