POWER August 2015 - 34

PLANT OF THE YEAR
Table 3. Boundary Dam Unit 3 carbon capture project performance.
Source: SaskPower
Commissioning date
Electrical data (MW)
Gross output
Station service
Capture station service
Compression
Net electrical output
Emissions intensity (mt/GWh)
CO2
SOx
NOx
139
1,040
6.5
2.2
Annual emissions (mt/yr) based on 90% capacity factor
CO2
SOx
NOx
PM10
PM2.5
Byproducts (mt/day)
CO2
H2SO4
Note: a. Includes all owner's margins; actual output will be higher.
fairly reliable thanks in part to the built-in
redundancies. A year from now, Bye said he
expects the capture facility to " run the same
amount of time that Unit 3 does. " Plantwide
performance data (as of May 2015) are shown
in Table 3.
Economics
There's no sugar-coating the fact that current
options for CCS at fossil-fired power plants
are expensive as well as technically challenging.
BD3's CCS project cost, according to a
February release by SaskPower, is C$1.467
billion. After the Canadian federal government's
C$240 million in subsidies, SaskPower
and its customers are responsible for
the balance. Cost overruns totaled more than
C$200 million. SaskPower notes that this
first-of-its-kind carbon capture plant was finished
on budget; challenges associated with
the existing power plant were the cause of
cost overruns.
In contrast to the BD3 project, the two major
pre-combustion CC projects in the U.S.
have seen significant cost overruns. Duke
Energy's 618-MW Edwardsport integrated
gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant
in Indiana was two years behind schedule,
US$1.5 billion over budget, and continues to
experience mechanical troubles that prevent
it from operating at 100% capacity. Mississippi
Power's 582-MW Kemper County
34
IGCC project, also behind schedule, is now
projected to cost over US$6 billion-nearly
triple its initial projected cost of $2.2 billion.
In May, the Kemper project lost a key power
buyer because of the delays and cost overruns.
Meanwhile, NRG Energy Inc.'s 2401,139,711
7,123
2,410
190
65
149
Original
1969
150
11
Rebuilt
non-capture
June 2014
161.1
12.1
Rebuilt capture
Oct. 2014
147.4
11.9
11.4
13.9
110.2a
130
1.21
112,741
1,050
15
7
3,240
56
financially challenged first-of-a-kind project
than the typical investor-owned or merchant
generator. Yeates observed that, " One essential
component of this is the interest rates we
pay given the province's AAA credit rating.
No commercial corporation can touch that,
and it saves bundles. " Several observers have
noted that the project's ability to support the
province's coal and oil resources are also
major elements of its anticipated long-term
success.
SaskPower retail rates, like those of other
utilities, vary by customer class. Residential
energy rates for 2015 range from 12.346¢/
kWh to 12.369¢/kWh. (For comparison, average
residential rates in the contiguous 48
states range from 8.65¢/kWh to 21.82¢/kWh.)
Though SaskPower asked for a 15.5% rate
increase over three years in 2013, the government
approved an initial 5.5% increase for
2014 but lowered the 2015 increase to 3%.
Bill Boyd, the provincial minister responsible
for SaskPower, would not say that the
BD3 project was responsible for the increase
and pointed instead to the utility's 10% demand
growth over the past two years as a reason
for the rate hike, according to an April 14
story in the capital's newspaper, The Regina
Leader-Post.
Groups favoring more renewables have
argued that SaskPower should instead have
developed more wind power in the province,
though an equivalent amount of wind power
would require some dispatchable firming capacity
and would certainly have resulted in
rate increases as well. Renewable sources
currently make up about 25% of SaskatcheSaskPower
notes that this first-of-itskind
carbon capture plant was finished
on budget; challenges associated with
the existing power plant were the cause
of cost overruns.
MW post-combustion CC project in Texas, at
the WA Parish plant (also designed to support
EOR), broke ground in September last year.
That project, with an estimated cost of US$1
billion, is scheduled for completion in 2016
and designed to capture 90% of CO2 emissions.
As
a government-owned utility, SaskPower
has a bit more flexibility in backing a
www.powermag.com
wan's power, and SaskPower says it is working
to add more.
Though the relative economics of different
fuel portfolios will vary geographically-as
determined by resources, markets, subsidies,
and regulatory requirements-there's
no denying that CCS carries both capital and
operational cost premiums, both in terms of
added operational and maintenance expenses
POWER | August 2015
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POWER August 2015

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