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A 'green' power plant in Faribault
The new MMPA electrical facility can power 265,000 homes a day yet have about 97% fewer harmful emissions.
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Faribault and 11 other Minnesota cities will begin receiving "green" electric power Saturday thanks to a new $180 million plant that runs on natural gas, excess turbine heat, rainwater, and soy oil and other biomass materials.
The Faribault Energy Park, owned by the Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (MMPA), can create 265 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 265,000 homes a day.
The blend of natural gas and sustainable materials used by the plant means that it will generate roughly 97 percent fewer harmful emissions than a traditional coal plant.
"This is an important win for Minnesota," MMPA Chairman Dave Pokorney said.
"Faribault Energy Park will mean reliable economical power for the state while balancing the mandate for electricity from renewable resources," he said.
The first phase of the plant began using natural gas in 2005. The second generator, which will dramatically expand the size of the plant, opens Saturday and will run on the excess heat from the first generator as well as vegetable oil and steam created from collected rainwater.
The result is highly efficient "combined cycle" power generation, said Derick Dahlen, president of Avant Energy Services, which designed and built the facility.
About 150 megawatts of power will come from the gas turbine engine, 100 megawatts will come from the heat recovery turbine, and about 15 to 20 megawatts will come from soy and camelina oils as well as other renewable fuels, Dahlen said.
The project, which took 1,000 workers to build, will employ 16 full-time workers and is expected to attract other businesses to the industrial park that need hot water for their processes.
The electricity created will be funneled to MMPA member utilities in Anoka, Arlington, Brownton, Buffalo, Chaska, East Grand Forks, Le Sueur, North St. Paul, Olivia, Shakopee and Winthrop. Excess power will be sold to other nearby utilities, officials said.
In addition to power generation, the 35-acre park will serve as an educational facility about environmentally friendly power generation.
Visitors can view the control room, steam turbine operations, oil storage and water collection systems from internal and external observation decks.
The campus-like park also has walking paths, fishing and bird-watching recreation areas.
The facility is the latest in a national trend to create cleaner and more efficient power plants in response to concerns about global warming. Other combined-cycle power plants were built recently by Calpine in Mankato and Xcel Energy in St. Paul.
A Minnesota law enacted this year requires utilities to supply at least 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025.
A series of experiments that include the addition of wind energy and the burning of recycled vegetable oil will be added to the Faribault site over the next few years. As a result, the facility should be able to meet the state's 25 percent goal by 2015, said Dahlen of Avant Energy.
MMPA utilities now use a mix of energy resources that includes a Manitoba hydro plant that can produce 60 megawatts of energy, a Rochester coal-fired plant that produces 50 megawatts and a gas turbine plant in Chaska that produces 45 megawatts. The Faribault project is the largest of all, with 265 megawatts.
Dee DePass • 612-673-7725
Dee DePass • ddepass@startribune.com
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