MidAmerican Energy Set to Begin Commercial Start-Up of $1.2 Billion Expansion Project at Council Bluffs

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). MidAmerican Energy (Des Moines, Iowa) has completed construction and is currently in start-up testing for the $1.2 Billion 790-megawatt Unit 4 expansion project at the Council Bluffs Power Station located in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Construction of the project started in September 2003 and was completed earlier this year. MidAmerican anticipates full commercial start-up of the new unit in June. The project consisted of installing a 790-megawatt four-flow compound tandem Hitachi Limited steam turbine class two pole generator. A Babcock-Hitachi supercritical once-through, sliding pressure coal-fired boiler was also installed. The project also features state-of-the art air quality technology such as activated carbon injection system for mercury reduction, a dry flue gas scrubber (DFGD) that removes SO2 (sulfur dioxide) emissions and a baghouse, which is used to remove particulate matter. Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and low NOx burners will be utilized as well. The expansion brings the plant nameplate capacity to 1,600 megawatts.

The Unit 4 project at Council Bluff was the first large capacity coal-fired EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) project for Hitachi Limited (NYSE:HIT ) (Tokyo, Japan) in the United States and is a part of history because advanced supercritical technology coal-fired power plants have not been constructed in the U.S. for at least 20 years. Mitsui and Company (also based in Tokyo) acted as the general contractor for the project.

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