Reliant Energy to Reduce NOx Emissions 88% by 2005 in the Houston Area

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Reliant Energy formerly Houston Lighting & Power (HL&P), the regulated electric division of Reliant Energy Incorporated (NYSE: REI) (Houston, Texas), is in the process of having Selective Catalytic Reduction units (SCR's) installed at four power stations in the Houston area. Sargent Lundy (Chicago, Illinois) is providing engineering and design while Babcock & Wilcox (Barberton, Ohio) is installing the equipment.

At the San Jacinto Cogen in La Porte, Texas, two SCR units are being installed on two natural gas-fired 80MW General Electric combustion turbine generators (GE 7EA). At Cedar Bayou, a 2,300MW station in Baytown, Texas, three SCR units are being installed on three supercritical natural gas/oil opposed-fired boilers [two Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) and one Foster Wheeler (FW)]. P H Robinson Station in Bacliff, Texas is a 2,310MW four-unit natural gas/oil station with SCR's being installed on opposed-fired boilers (three B&W & one FW). The 3,970MW W A Parish Station SCR's are being installed on five of eight units. Equipment will be installed on four coal-fired boilers and the largest natural gas boiler, a 580MW CE tangential-fired unit.

Robinson Four, Cedar Bayou Two, and WA Parish Six are scheduled for completion by the end of the year. Meanwhile the San Jacinto Cogen, Cedar Bayou One, and two units at both Parish & Robinson are to follow in 2003. The final units at Cedar Bayou, Robinson, and Parish stations will be completed in 2004 and 2005. With emission averaging, this schedule should reduce NOx emissions by 44% in 2003 & 88% in 2004 compared to 1998 levels.

Reliant Energy/HL&P started operations in 1882, only about three months after Thomas Edison directed completion of the country's first electric plant in New York City. Today, more than 120 years later, they deliver electricity to more than 1.7 million customers in the Houston/Gulf Coast area. They are the eighth largest investor-owned utility in the nation, maintaining 37,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines to deliver more than 72 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. The 5,000 square-mile service area represents only about two percent of the geographic area of Texas, but accounts for about one-third of the state's consumption of electricity. Reliant is an international energy services and energy delivery company with approximately $46 billion in annual revenue and total assets exceeding $29 billion. The company has nearly 31,000 megawatts of power generation in operation in the U.S. and is one of the largest marketers of both power and natural gas in North America. The company also has wholesale trading and marketing operations and nearly 3,500 megawatts of power generation in Western Europe. Reliant Energy's retail marketing and distribution operations serve approximately four million electricity and natural gas customers in the United States.