POWER September 2017 - 20

TOP PLANTS
The Highly Efficient Workhorse
of Brunswick County
Courtesy: Dominion Energy
Dominion Energy's massive new natural gas-fired combined cycle power plant in
Freeman, Virginia, has been servicing customers since April 2016. In its first year online,
the plant carried roughly 10% of Dominion's total load, making it a workhorse
in the company's growing natural gas fleet.
Abby L. Harvey
D
ominion Energy is sitting in a tricky
spot. Electricity demand is growing at
an aggressive rate, stressing an aging
fleet of coal-fired power plants. To address
this challenge, Dominion has started to build
a fleet of massive, highly efficient natural gas
plants; the largest currently in operation-
the Brunswick County Power Station-is a
source of ongoing pride for the power company.
" There
were coal plants being retired both
within our system and across PJM in general.
Virginia's pretty fortunate in that we do have
the regional growth, which continues, and we
do have the need for power, " Mark Mitchell,
Dominion's vice president of generation construction,
told POWER. " Based on that, this
plant [is] a fairly large facility. It's one of the
largest and, we think, most efficient combined
cycles in the world. "
Dominion projects load growth exceeding
5,300 MW in its service territory over the
next 15 years, with an annual growth rate of
1.7%. Dominion has or plans to retire more
than 900 MW of coal in its fleet, just a fraction
of the 19,000 MW of coal-fired capacity
in PJM that was retired from 2011 to 2015.
20
Plant Specs
The Brunswick County Power Station is
a 1,358-MW natural gas-fired 3 x 1 combined
cycle plant. It utilizes three Mitsubishi
M501GAC gas turbines and Mitsubishi
steam turbine.
" We ran a competitive process, telling
people what our goals [were], one of them
being efficiency, one of them being the
amount of output, and of course the cost. So
we ran a competitive [request for proposals]
to pick Mitsubishi actually at Warren
County, " Mitchell said, referencing a slightly
smaller natural gas plant in Fort Royal, Virginia,
that has been in service since December
2014. " [Then we] decided to use them at
Brunswick County. It was through a competitive
process, but they were good partners,
and they have very good equipment. "
Steam is produced by three GE/Alstom
heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs),
each with 500 MMBtu of duct burning capacity.
Each HRSG is equipped with selective
catalytic reduction (SCR) technology, as
well as CO catalysts, ensuring strict environmental
compliance.
The plant also has an enormous 72-cell
air-cooled condenser (ACC), which is curwww.powermag.com
rently
the largest single ACC in the nation.
Luckily, the size of the ACC was not a major
impediment to the project, as it is just
slightly larger than others that Dominion has
installed recently.
" They're very large structures. They're
fairly labor intensive to install. So it's just
how do you plan for that? How do you plan
the startup? Even though it's the largest, we
at Dominion have installed a few others, "
Mitchell said. " We installed another one
at our Warren County site that was slightly
smaller than Brunswick, and now, of course,
we've installed Brunswick. We're actually
building another combined cycle right now
that's a bit larger than Brunswick and it will
have a slightly larger air-cooled condenser. "
Communication Is Key to Success
Construction on the plant began in August
2013. Fluor completed the engineering, procurement,
construction, and commissioning
for the plant. All told, the plant was completed
ahead of schedule and under budget,
a feat that was achieved due to transparency
throughout the development process, Mitchell
said.
" When you're starting off a project, before
POWER | September 2017

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POWER September 2017

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