Mar 25 2008
Nevada Power Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sierra Pacific Resources, Kern River Gas Transmission Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, and Ormat Nevada Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ormat Technologies Inc. announced today plans to build a six-megawatt (MW) waste-heat recovery renewable energy project in the Goodsprings area approximately 35 miles south of Las Vegas.
The project, subject to regulatory approvals, is scheduled to be completed in 2010 and will produce enough renewable energy to supply 1,200 residential customers in southern Nevada.
"We are very pleased to be able to reach agreements to bring another renewable energy project to southern Nevada,” said Tom Fair, Sierra Pacific Resources executive, renewable energy. "This innovative energy recovery project is another step in our commitment to invest in more renewable projects."
“Kern River is proud to be part of this environmentally sound project,” said Micheal Dunn, Kern River president. “These systems will generate additional power with no increase in emissions. With the renewed focus on green power, Kern River developed a company goal to evaluate waste heat recovery systems. We’re pleased to be part of this project and assist one of our largest customers in meeting their goals of supplying renewable power.”
“We are happy to have been chosen to be the supplier for this first Recovered Energy Generation Power Plant (REG) in Nevada, the first REG unit to be owned by a Utility and the first REG installation on the Kern River Pipeline,” said Dita Bronicki, Chief Executive Officer of Ormat. “The leadership of Sierra Pacific Resources in the implementation of the Renewable Portfolio Standard is once again demonstrated in this project which produces electricity without burning additional gas and without emissions, and therefore increases the utilization of the energy content of the gas by approximately 25%.”
The project consists of two agreements. The first agreement, between Nevada Power and Kern River, allows Nevada Power to build the facility at Kern River’s Goodsprings compressor station site. In the second agreement Nevada Power has contracted with Ormat to engineer, procure and construct the waste heat recovery system. Ormat has developed a proprietary technology that efficiently harvests waste heat at such facilities to produce electrical energy. Financial terms of the agreements were not disclosed.
Nevada Power will file the Kern River agreement with the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUCN) for approval of the project.
In the normal operation of the compressor station, some waste heat is released. This thermal energy can be captured and converted to electricity by the installation of an energy converter similar to those used in geothermal electricity generation. The Goodsprings Project will use three heat exchangers to capture the heat from each of the existing gas turbines used to compress the gas and a recovered energy generator to produce the electrical output.