Southern Company's Biomass Power Plant in Texas on Grid

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--After bomb threats, construction stoppages and cost overrides, Southern Power Company's (NYSE:SO) (Atlanta, Georgia) Nacogdoches Generating Facility biomass power plant project in Sacul, Texas, is now on the grid and producing power for the city of Austin. The plant is under a 20-year contract agreement with the city. In November of last year, a bomb threat message was found scribbled inside a portable toilet, and construction of the $421 million plant was halted while the Nacogdoches County Sheriff's Department investigated the threat.

The 117-megawatt (MW), biomass-fired plant has been under construction since October 2009, and was scheduled to be mechanically complete by year's end and go into operation during the second quarter of 2012. The contractors building the plant are Fagen Incorporated (Granite Falls, Minnesota) and Zachry Engineering (Minneapolis, Minnesota). They soon resumed construction and delayed start-up of the plant by about two months.

The 117-MW plant will burn more than 1 million tons of Texas wood waste per year. The plant is now one of the largest biomass-fueled power plants in the U.S.

American Renewables LLC (Boston, Massachusetts) was the original developer of the renewable power plant. In October 2009, the company sold the Nacogdoches Power LLC project to Southern Company.

Southern Company and its divisions have more than $22 billion in capital and maintenance spending planned through the fourth quarter of 2013. Projects are located in Alabama ($166 million); Florida ($174 million); Georgia ($18.2 billion); Mississippi ($3.4 billion) and North Carolina ($700 million).

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