Connecticut Siting Council in the US has approved Competitive Power Ventures’s (CPV) plan to develop 785MW CPV Towantic Energy Center at Oxford, which will be fuelled by natural-gas.
The project was initially approved as a 512MW project in 1999, but could not be built due to market conditions.
In 2012, CPV formed a new partnership with GE Energy Financial Services to redevelop the project.
New England’s grid operator (ISO-New England) had predicted retirement of nearly 10% of the power generation capacity in the region in 2014, which is likely to increase in the future.
The announcement and modifications to the ISO-NE Forward Capacity Market, which allows financing of major infrastructure projects like this one , prompted CPV to start with its efforts to upgrade the project design.
The firm intends to implement GE’s combined-cycle generating technology to boost the efficiency of the project.
Financing for the facility construction is likely to be done during the third quarter of the year, following which construction is scheduled to start by the fourth quarter.
Construction for the project is likely to continue for around 30 months with commercial operations expected to start in 2018.
PV Towantic Energy Center will use natural gas to generate electricity, which will power more than 750,000 homes in Connecticut area.
The centre will use dry-cooling and advanced natural gas turbine and environmental control technology to generate electricity.
