Power plant progressing
The Deer Creek Station is 70 percent complete, and an average of 400 workers are on site every day.
The Brookings Register
- October 6, 2011
Staff reports
See a photo here: Power plant progressing
Crews continue to get closer to finishing the $405 million Deer Creek Station power plant that is being built near White by Bismarck, N.D,.-based Basin Electric Power Cooperative.
Construction began in the summer of 2010 on the plant, which will use two turbine-generator sets once operational: one fired by natural gas, the other powered by steam created from the exhaust heat of the gas turbine.
Both the steam and combustion turbine generators have been set into place, according to Basin Electric’s Lucas Tiegen, the site construction coordinator.
The plant is 70 percent complete, and an average of 400 workers are on site every day. Tiegen said the next major milestone is to backfeed power into the plant from a substation near White owned by Western Area Power Administration.
The substation will provide enough power to fire up more equipment at the plant and get it ready for eventual self-sustaining operation. Tiegen hopes to do a first firing of the combustion turbine in late February or early March.
He said the plant is still on pace to be opened for commercial operation in June 2012.
Basin officials expect Deer Creek to be part of a power supply network providing electricity to 135 rural electric systems in nine states.
Natural gas for the plant will come from the Northern Border Pipeline 14 miles north of the site.
Headquarters
1717 East Interstate Avenue
Bismarck, ND 58503-0564 USA
Phone: 701.223.0441
Basin Electric Power Cooperative will provide cost-effective wholesale energy along with products and services that support and unite rural America.
