Wygen III Ready to Begin Operations in Wyoming

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--After two years of construction, the 110-megawatt (MW) Wygen III coal-fired power plant will be ready for commercial operations on April 1. Owner Black Hills Corporation (Rapid City, South Dakota) began construction on the $255 million plant in March 2008.

The plant consists of a Siemens steam turbine generator powered by a Babcock & Wilcox (Baberton, Ohio) pulverized coal boiler, featuring AireJet low-nitrogen oxide (NOx) burners; selective catalytic reduction to control NOx emissions; dry flue-gas desulfurization to control sulphur dioxide; and a fabric-filter baghouse to control dust particulates, which will give the plant one of the lowest emissions for a coal-fired generating plant in the United States. PIC Group Incorporated (Marietta, Georgia) performed the erection and installation of this equipment. This unit will join five existing coal-fired generation units and two existing gas-fired combustion turbines at the Neil Simpson Energy Complex, which is near Gillette, Wyoming.

The plant will use advanced air-cooled condenser technology by SPX Cooling Technologies (Bridgewater, New Jersey) to reduce water consumption by 93% compared to conventional cooling, and will be engineered for future carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage.

The prime contractors for the project are Fagen Incorporated (Granite Falls, Minnesota), which was responsible for the mechanical completion, and ABB Group (Norwalk, Connecticut), which supplied power generation automation and electrical design expertise for Wygen III. Black & Veatch (Overland Park, Kansas) is the owner's engineer and is responsible for electrical, mechanical and structural engineering, as well as engineering air-quality control systems.

Power from the facility will be sold to the city of Gillette under a seven-year power purchase agreement, including an option to purchase 23% of Wygen III.

Low-sulfur Powder River Basin coal will fuel the plant and be supplied by the nearby Wyodak coal mine, which is owned by Wyodak Resources Development Corporation, a subsidiary of Black Hills Corporation.

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