Natural gas concern BG Group Plc said Thursday it will acquire the Lake Road power plant, an 805MW gas and oil fired combined cycle facility in Dayville, Conn., for $685 million.
Lake Road is BG’s second power plant purchase in the region; in October it acquired the 170MW combined cycle Dighton power plant in Bristol County, Massachusetts. BG said it sees ISO-NE as an attractive market given the newly implemented Forward Capacity Market and the rapidly tightening reserve margins in the region.
ISO-NE is a regional transmission organization, serving Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. The Forward Capacity Market (FCM) is a mechanism implemented by ISO-NE to ensure a controlled approach to new generation build in the region. Operational from December 2006, FCM gives a fixed monthly capacity payment to existing generation capacity.
BG operates in four business segments - Exploration and Production, LNG, Transmission and Distribution, and Power. The company's BG LNG Services holds, through 2028, 100 percent of the capacity rights at North America’s largest operating LNG importation terminal, Lake Charles in Louisiana. This facility has the capability to receive, store, vaporise and deliver an average daily send out of 1.8 billion cubic feet per day.