Tampa Electric's Polk Power Station Abuzz with Project Activity

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Tampa Electric Company (Tampa, Florida), a unit of TECO Energy Incorporated (NYSE:TE) (Tampa), has begun expanding its Polk County Power Station. The $700 million expansion project, which kicked off in April, will convert four simple-cycle, gas-fired generators to combined-cycle units, adding about 460 megawatts (MW) of new generation to the 680 MW of existing gas-fired generation.

The project will add four heat-recovery steam generators (HRSGs) to the existing combustion turbine generators in Polk units 2, 3, 4 and 5. Unit 1, an integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) generator, is not involved in the expansion.

Tampa Electric said it needs the new generation by 2017 to replace power-purchase agreements that expire at the end of 2016, and to meet future electric demand growth. Black & Veatch Incorporated (Kansas City, Missouri) is providing engineering services for the project; Zachry Engineering Corporation (San Antonio, Texas) is a contractor. The utility is in the final stages of selecting an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm for the Polk expansion. Tampa Electric expects to sign a contract for EPC services this summer.

The expanded generation at Polk necessitates new transmission lines. Tampa Electric will build a 40-mile, high-voltage, 230-kilovolt (kV) overhead transmission line to bring the additional power from an expanded Polk station to its electric grid. Construction of the Polk-to-Fishhawk grassroot transmission line, valued at about $180 million, is scheduled to kick off next April and to be complete in early 2016. The line will stretch from the Polk substation to the Fishhawk substation, extending to the proposed Aspen substation in Hillsborough County, Florida. Black & Veatch also is providing engineering services to that project.

A third project at the Polk station involves carbon capture. Tampa Electric and RTI International (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina) are putting the finishing touches on a demonstration project that will capture the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by 50 MW of generation from Polk Unit 1, a 250-MW unit that began operating in 1996. In addition to capturing CO2, the technology removes sulfur from the flue gas stream.

RTI said its technology, currently in the pre-commercial demonstration phase, will remove contaminants, such as sulfur and heavy metals at warm process temperatures, eliminating the need for substantial synthesis gas (syngas) cooling and expensive heat recovery systems. This would significantly increase the thermal efficiency and reduce the capital and operating costs of new gasification-based systems, when compared with conventional process technologies.

That demonstration project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) (Washington, D.C.). "Mechanical construction of the pre-commercial demonstration facility, using first-of-a-kind technologies, was completed ahead of schedule and below the targeted budget," RTI International said in a statement about the carbon-capture project.

"The Power industry will closely watch the results of the Polk carbon capture technology demonstration project," said Brock Ramey, Industrial Info's North American Power research manager. "Given tightening environmental restrictions, if coal is to keep a meaningful role as a fuel for electricity generation, the industry needs to find a cost-effective way to capture--and then sequester--CO2 emissions."

The expansion of the Polk station will cause Tampa Electric to begin using reclaimed wastewater to cool that plant. In a project scheduled to be operating this summer, Tampa Electric will use a 15-mile pipeline to bring treated wastewater from the City of Lakeland about 15 miles to the Polk station. That water will be re-treated at the Polk site, before being used to cool the station's generators. The power plant will begin using treated wastewater this summer; it expects to use about 5 million gallons per day.

Some years in the future, the Polk plant could expand its use of treated wastewater to between 17 million and 20 million gallons per day, spokesperson Cherie Jacobs told Industrial Info. "Using wastewater allows us to significantly expand the generating capacity of the Polk station without using any additional potable water to cool the plant," she said.

"We are very excited to finally be coming out of our recession," Jacobs continued. "People cut back on electric use during the recession, and growth was flat to mildly negative. But the residential homebuilding industry is coming back in our area, and we see electric demand growing 1% to 1.5% per year for the next several years. That's why we are engaging in these projects."

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