Dec 28 2010
Ameren Energy Resources (AER) declared that it has completed the required upgrades at the cost of around $900 million for its Coffeen Power Plant, which includes the installation of solar panels.
The power generated by the solar panels will be utilized to administer a water system located at the new landfill site of the plant. The landfill is utilized for storing spin-offs of burning coal, which is used for producing electric power.
The company has installed solar power generation facilities at its three power plants such as Newton, Duck Creek and coffeen located in Illinois. The installed solar power systems also incorporate battery-backup to manage the power during cloudy periods and night times. Earlier in 2009 and 2010, the company has installed the most modern type of environment controls, which includes scrubbers to organize the release of sulfur dioxide by around 90%. The Coffeen and Newton solar plants have incorporated solar-powered data accumulation systems for managing the water facility at the lake. The electricity generated from the solar systems will be utilized to power the sensors installed in the systems to supervise the temperature of the lake and the radio systems that send across the collected temperature data back to the plants.
Chris Iselin, Vice President of AER, said that though the installed solar panels are comparatively smaller in size, but helped the company to save on installation costs and its spending on extra power consumption and added that the experience gained will enable the company to utilize a similar technology for its future usages.
Source: http://www.ameren.com