Ohio Natural-Gas-Fired Plant Is on Schedule
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Sara Klein • Staff Writer couple of miles north of Carrollton, Ohio, on what used to be a bean field just off state Route 9, construction crews have been working around the clock to build a facility that will produce 700 megawatts of electricity using a 21stcentury approach that leaves coal-based methods in the annals of the energy industry. The $900-million project is the Carroll County Energy power plant. When completed, the facility’s combined-cycle system will use not coal but natural gas to produce electricity. The system uses natural gas to heat air that turns a turbine connected to a generator, which creates electricity. Exhaust heat from the gas turbine is then used to heat water, which creates steam to turn a second turbine connected to a second generator. The result: even more electricity. The method produces power with nearly twice the efficiency of coal-fired plants while producing less than 50 percent of the carbon emissions that coal-based methods use, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
experience in the Middle East, Europe and Asia, Terajewicz is no stranger to a project that would seem monumentally impossible.
“Combined cycle power plants like this, they’re very, very familiar to me,” “We only have very limited windows he commented during an early August allowed from AEP to cut into their interview with Gas & Oil Magazine. main line because that’s a disruption,” Terajewicz said.
“It requires very good communication between the different crafts. It’s a dance, in a sense, of making sure what’s coming and what needs to go out.”
To make the system run more smoothly, CCE crews built a 345,000-volt switchyard, which was completed this summer ahead of schedule. Called the Stemple Switchyard, the site gave AEP the opportunity to cut its main transmission line and connect directly with Stemple. “That enables us to connect to that piece of work whenever we need to, and in fact we will connect to that for the power station,” he explained. Another step in the CCE project is
—Chris Terajewicz connecting to existing natural gas That figurative dance began after last summer’s groundbreaking with preparation of the site, most of which sits on just 15 acres of a 77-acre project area.
By the end of last year, excavations, Carroll County Energy is the first of three fencing, and underground gas and water plants in Ohio to use this natural-gas- pipelines had already been installed. By fired system. earlier this summer, crews had poured foundations for major equipment at the Nearly 600 workers will ultimately use site. 20 miles of pipe, 200 miles of cable, 1,600 tons of structural steel and 16,000 yards of Terajewicz said this spring and summer’s concrete to build the facility. work has focused on connecting CCE to the outside world of the power grid, Chris Terajewicz, of parent company the interstate gas pipeline system, and Advanced Power, is the project manager Carrollton’s water treatment plant. for CCE. With 40 years of experience building power plants, including CCE will send its 700 megawatts of
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electricity into the grid using a connection with power lines already installed by utility company American Electrical Power. To do this, crews are cutting into AEP’s main transmission line.
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CCE Cranes lift the first HRSG module
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