WHEELING, W.Va. — Andrew Dorn believes stringent Environmental Protection Agency emissions standards will precipitate more natural gas fired electricity plants, such as his 549-megawatt Moundsville Power generator.
Dorn’s company cleared the final construction hurdle by receiving its siting permit from the Public Service Commission of West Virginia, as the firm previously gained an air quality permit from the Department of Environmental Protection.
“I think there will have to be more plants like this because of the retirement of coal plants,” Dorn, managing partner for Buffalo, N.Y.-based Moundsville Power, said.
Dorn said the company plans to begin building its $615 million facility on the 37-acre portion of land south of Moundsville between W.Va. 2 and the Ohio River in “October or November.” The new facility will be just a few miles north of the coal-fired American Electric Power Kammer Plant, which is slated for shutdown this year.
“We have to be operational by June 1, 2018,” he said, adding he believes the plant should be built by the end of 2017.
Dorn said the facility will use about 100 million cubic feet of natural gas – roughly the production of two or three successful horizontal wells – daily to produce its electricity. He said the company is finalizing a contract with a single producer to supply natural gas to the plant, though he declined to name the firm.
“It will be a name everyone there will recognize. We can burn a lot of gas for them,” Dorn said. “If we can burn $105 million worth of gas annually, that will increase the royalty payments for mineral owners.”
Once operational, the plant is expected to be the largest consumer of natural gas in West Virginia. It will also be one of the first in the U.S. to burn ethane, according to company officials.
Dorn believes the project will create 400 construction jobs and 30 full-time jobs. He said the plant will be a combined-cycle facility, which has natural gas run one of the plant’s turbines, while the exhaust heat from this process drives an additional steam turbine. He also maintains his firm will meet the $615 million price tag with private financing.
“We are in the process of completing our contract with Black & Veatch, global engineering firm, to build the plant. They have built over 130 of these plants all over the world,” Dorn said.
Originally, Moundsville Power awarded the contract to CH2M Hill, but Dorn said that firm decided to stop building power plants.
Dorn said the generator will place power onto the PJM Interconnection grid for use wherever there is a need for electricity. West Virginia is one of the 13 states whose power supply is regulated by PJM, so some of the electricity could be used in the Mountain State.
Although the natural gas plant will produce lower levels of emissions than a comparable coal plant, it is not emissions-free. According to the DEP legal notice, Moundsville Power is authorized to emit certain levels of pollutants each year, although DEP Engineer Steven Pursley said actual emissions are often lower than the allowable amount. Among the annual emissions are 145.3 tons of nitrogen oxide, 209.4 tons of carbon monoxide, 74.8 tons of volatile organic compounds and 3.1 tons of sulfuric acid mist.
Dorn said the facility will not reach these emission levels, however.
Last year, former Marshall County commissioners Don Mason and Brian Schambach outvoted current Commissioner Bob Miller, 2-1, to approve a Payment in Lieu of Tax plan to facilitate the power plant’s construction. Under the PILOT, the county will take official ownership of the natural gas power plant upon its completion for the sum of $1, while the firm will lease the facility from the county. Commissioners will receive about $31 million worth of lease payments over 30 years via the PILOT plan.
Since then, Mason and Schambach have retired from the commission, a fact not lost on Dorn. He said he looks forward to working with Miller, as well as new commissioners Scott Varner and Stanley Stewart.
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