Louisiana Studies the Addition of Over 7,700 Megawatts of Generation

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). The state of Louisiana, with an installed operational electrical generation capacity of over 28,000 megawatts produced from 238 units, has ongoing studies by power producers to add more than 7,700 megawatts from 49 new units that will represent increased and replacement generation. Currently, there are an additional 23 units representing over 3,700 megawatts that were planned, but have now been placed on hold. The new generation is planned to come from six main fuel sources: coal, petroleum (pet) coke, natural gas, oil, nuclear and wind.

Click on the image at right to see a chart showing the breakdown of new generation planned by fuel type.

Coal/pet coke new power generation is being studied utilizing three types of technologies: pulverized (PC), atmospheric circulating fluidized bed (ACFB) and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) having initial capital costs of $1,000 to $2,000 per megawatt. Selection of the solid fuels coal and pet coke is prevalent because they are two of the cheaper fuels (pet coke is a by-product of petroleum refining) and with clean coal technologies they can be fairly low in air emissions.

Nuclear is also a low-cost fuel form of power generation, but has two main detractions: initial capital construction costs ($2,000 to $3,000 per megawatt) plus storage and disposal of nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. Nuclear generation may come back due to the efforts to reduce the length of time for licensing application and may have the ability to have new generation of about 1,100 megawatts as early as 2015.

Natural gas and oil-fired generation projects have fallen back and being put on hold in planning due to the high and unstable fuel costs. This type of unit is favorable due to low initial capital cost ($350 to $800 per megawatt), lower environmental air emissions and quick start-up.

Wind is a relatively new type of generation to Louisiana. There is over 500 megawatts of wind generation at more than ten sites being proposed at a cost of about $1,500 per megawatt. These projects are plannned to be based on and around abandoned oil and natural gas rigs off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico.

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