The U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman announced Tuesday the signing of a Record of Decision that paves the way for construction of a $569 million, 285 megawatt coal-fired power plant that will be one of the cleanest, most efficient plants of its kind in the world.
The plant will be co-owned by Southern Power Co., the Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC), and Kellogg, Brown and Root and will be located at OUC’s existing Stanton Energy Center near Orlando, Fla.
The Dept. of Energy (DOE) will provide 41 percent of the funding, or $235 million, through a cooperative agreement with Southern Power.
“The innovative technologies we are funding through President Bush’s Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) hold the promise of generating clean, reliable, and affordable electricity in the United States, utilizing our most abundant natural resource, coal,” Secretary Bodman said.
The Florida plant will demonstrate an advanced power generation system that uses a form of integrated gasification-combined cycle technology and state-of-the-art emission controls, and cost-effectively uses low-rank coals, as well as coals with a high moisture or high ash content. These coals comprise half of the proven U.S. and world reserves.
This is one of three projects taking place under the second round of the CCPI, a 10-year, $2-billion demonstration program that seeks to deliver innovative technologies to improve the environmental performance of new and existing coal-fired power plants in the U.S.
The other projects are Excelsior Energy Inc. and ConocoPhillips’ 531-megawatt Mesaba Energy Project at Hoyt Lakes, Minn., and the Pegasus Technology Project, a joint effort between Pegasus Technologies Inc. and Texas Genco to demonstrate technology advancements supporting the President’s Clean Skies Initiative calling for significant reductions in power plant emissions, particularly mercury, by 2018.