In line with the global trend of energy saving and high performance in power generation, Louisiana State of the U.S., with abundant natural-gas deposit, has broken ground on a new-type 994 MW natural gas-fired power plant, capable of cutting CO2 emission by 40%.

The power plant, dubbed Lake Charles power station, is a CCGT (combined cycle power generation) plant, was built by Entergy Louisiana, a subsidiary of major U.S. power firm Entergy Corp., at cost of US$872 million. It broke ground in Jan. this year and is scheduled for inauguration in June 2020, capable of supplying power to 675,000 households, in addition to creating 1,200 job openings during construction period and 30 long-term posts.

The CCGT system will consist of two sets of Mitsubishi-Hitachi G-series natural gas-fired turbine generators, equipped with booster transformer, capable of big-data analysis and machine learning, which will enable the plant to constantly adjust and enhance performance in operation. It will draw cooling water from ponds under the jurisdiction of the Sabine River Authority, which will be recycled for use, thanks to a closed-loop system, minimizing impact on water resources of the ponds, which only need repletion of vaporized water.

Most new natural gas-fired power plants embrace CCGT system, which transmits waste heat from natural-gas burning to heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) for producing steam which is then used to generate extra power before being sent to water condenser for cooling down. The system can raise heat-engine efficiency to over 51%, up from 34%, thereby boosting power output by near 50%.

The plant will be sited beside Roy S Nelson Plant of Entergy, taking advantage of the latter's existing infrastructure, an arrangement which will cut cost of transmission engineering by US$600 million, achieving total saving of US$1.3- 2 billion within 30 years, on top of slashing of CO2 emission, compared with traditional natural gas-fired power plant.

The plant follows a previous 980 MW CCGT plant built by Entergy Louisiana, which broke ground in Jan. 2017 and is scheduled for launch in June 2019, supplying more than 670,000 households.

(Written by Daisy Chuang; first photo courtesy of Entergy)