Jago Times "English Edition" Best Online Newspaper
The new Montgomery County power plant construction is off to a rapid start in Willis.
Entergy and McDermott are already through about 80 percent of the first phase for the $937 million power plant. That’s two months ahead of schedule, said Entergy’s Project Director Russ Cochran.
The plant will span across roughly a quarter of the 75-acre site near the existing Lewis Creek Power Plant off Longstreet. Large cranes have started assembling major structures, including installing 100-foot tall heat recovery steam generators. The tallest structure for the plant will be 195-foot tall exhaust stacks that will stand behind the generators.
By summer 2021, the 993-megawatt power plant is expected to meet the average power needs of 640,000 typical Texas homes — powering homes and businesses across Entergy’s 27 county service area. Over 400 jobs have been created and filled by employees who travel nationwide to work on the project. That number is expected to rise to 850 as construction continues, Cochran said.
Three cranes are required to carefully install modules that contain steam tube bundles that will go inside the structures with the lightest weighing 250,000 pounds and the heaviest at nearly 500,000 pounds.
RELATED: Entergy begins work on $937 million power plant in Willis
“You’re talking about lifting approaching 500,000 pounds over 100 feet into the air,” Cochran said noting the importance of how the cranes work together. “Then they have to slide them in and do that 10 times for each unit. It’s very cool to watch. …It’s a work of art.”
Gas turbines and generators are expected to arrive by the end of July. The next big installation will be the gas turbines followed by the steam turbines and large transformers. Two gas turbines shipped from Tokyo and assembled in the U.S. will be the most-expensive pieces of equipment that the cranes will need to move.
Together, the equipment will help bring to life the plant’s unique combined cycle gas turbine generation technology, which burns fuel in the turbines that are similar to an airplane engine to generate power to produce steam. The exhaust gas from a turbine engine is close to 4 million pounds per hour and over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
“We use that energy to produce steam in a boiler just like a conventional power plant does, and we send that to a steam turbine that is bolted to a generator to produce more electricity,” Cochran said. “Because you are only burning the fuel once and you have two generators it is way more efficient. Your efficiency goes right up so that’s really the combined cycle — it’s using gas turbine technology to generate power and provides a heat source to produce steam
RELATED: Entergy Texas plans for the future with new power station
There is still more tedious work ahead, including with the second construction phase of the power plant project that will erect more steel structures, pipes, cables, and wires. That will include 10,000 pipe spools. By the end, the plant will have 2,000 tons of structural steel, 24,000 feet of underground pipe, 105,000 above ground pipe, 1.2 million feet of wire and cable, and 27,000 cubic yards of concrete. The third phase will focus on commission — making everything work.
“What always amazed me is that every single piece out there has a particular place it has to go and the effort on tracking it,” Tom Smith with McDermott said.
While significant progress has been made during the first phase, Cochran said it is too soon to tell if the project will be finished ahead of the anticipated May 2021 completion date.
Cochran credits much of the smooth process so far to lessons learned from building of two other state-of-the-art combined cycle gas turbine facilities that he said will also produce affordable, reliable and clean energy for Entergy’s customers. The Saint Charles power station in Montz, Louisiana went into operation two weeks ago and the Lake Charles power station in Westlake, Louisiana is expected to be completed next year.
RELATED: More nuclear plants close but we get more power than ever from them
The construction for this project began in October following the ground-breaking ceremony in February. Cochran shared the crews have had at least one unique challenge for the heavy equipment — the soil. To overcome the challenge of expansive clay, more sand has been brought in. Another challenge included some flooding at the Houston port where shipments were received for the construction of the plant.
The project, which was driven by growth in Montgomery County, is also a part of Entergy’s greater plan that focuses on planning for and investing in the future. The investments will help grow the economy and be beneficial for customers with a $1.9 billion capital investment for 2019-21 and new technology.
“What they are building here is smaller, but the output is almost double of what Lewis Creek puts out,” Communications Manager Andy Schonert said noting the Lewis Creek plant was built in 1970-71. “That’s really much more efficient. A lot of that translates into being more efficient with the fuel savings which directly goes to customers.