POWER October 2019 - 26

TOP PLANT
Redefining Modern Gas Power:
Lackawanna Energy Center
Courtesy: Kiewit Corp.
To endure a highly competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, Invenergy
made the bold choice as it developed the 1,480-MW Lackawanna Energy Center
in Jessup, Pennsylvania, to pair a first-of-its-kind single-shaft design with
recently introduced GE HA-class gas turbines. The project proved to be a triumph
for the industry heavyweights that collaborated to complete it on an aggressive
schedule, as well as for its developer, which now operates the highly
efficient and remarkably flexible power plant.
Sonal Patel
A
s Invenergy CEO Michael Polsky
tells it, all the markers were right in
2012, when the privately held global
developer first began mulling building
a power plant on the side of an Appalachian
Mountain just outside Scranton in
Pennsylvania's Lackawanna County. A
key consideration was that it would operate
in the cutthroat PJM Interconnection
wholesale power market-where 18
GW of new combined cycle gas turbine
(CCGT) capacity, incentivized by relatively
stable and cheap shale-driven natural gas
prices, was already in planning to replace
a slew of newly announced coal retirements.
But rather than dwell on whether
the plant was " needed, " Invenergy's approach
was focused on establishing " the
best project at the best location " in order
to ensure competitiveness, Polsky said.
The Lackawanna site had " very low
interconnection costs, which is very critical,
and a good gas supply story, " Polsky
said. However, because interconnect positions
initially supported only 1,370 MW,
the company first considered using gas
turbines that it had in storage, as Dan
Ewan, Invenergy's senior vice president
of Thermal Development, told POWER.
" We thought, 'Well, maybe we could do
a combination of a CCGT and a peaker
plant,' " he recalled. But " Development is
26
never sort of a straight path, " noted Ewan.
" Opportunities arise, and we respond. "
The first opportunity came in 2014,
when interconnection studies suggested
that the site had the potential to house
a much bigger power plant than Invenergy
had anticipated. At the same time,
General Electric (GE) had just launched
its 7HA.02 high-efficiency, air-cooled
natural gas combustion turbines. The
high efficiency and operational flexibility
of the state-of-the-art gas turbines was
especially attractive, and it was a bonus
that GE had worked closely with Invenergy
on multiple projects before, Ewan
noted. However, " before we'd even totally
closed our contract with them, they
came out with a single-shaft unit, " which
opened up new options, he said. They included
the innovative configuration Invenergy
settled on: three 500-MW power
islands-each equipped with a combustion
turbine, a steam turbine, and a generator
on a single shaft.
A Single Shaft with Myriad
Benefits
The approach was typical for the company
Polsky founded in 2001, and which,
owing in large part to its characteristic
" entrepreneurial " style, has grown its
development portfolio to more than 22
GW, including wind, solar, energy storwww.powermag.com
age,
and natural gas projects. However,
as Polsky noted, project development
at Invenergy is often conducted with
" careful thinking, because, really, we are
a private company, and we can't afford
big mistakes, " he noted.
A key reason that it opted for GE's single-shaft
design-never before installed
on a 60-Hz commercial power plant-
was because it offered " unique opportunities, "
he said. Essentially, " we could
begin to generate power while we were
still under construction, " said Ewan. " And
now during operation, [it] allows us much
greater
flexibility in maintenance, because
we can take one unit offline, and
still have two units generating power. So,
we're continuing to make revenue for the
project, and we've got a lot more flexibility
and maintenance. And if there are situations
where you have forced outages, it
doesn't affect the entire plant. "
As Dave Ross, GE vice president of
Sales for North America, told POWER,
the first-of-a-kind configuration Invenergy
settled on was a result of " many
iterations. " But along with Invenergy's
" vision, " its successful implementation
would have been more challenging
without the diligent execution achieved
by Lackawanna's engineering, procurement,
and construction (EPC) contractor,
Kiewit Power Constructors (KPC). KPC is
POWER | October 2019
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POWER October 2019

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