New juice in Ontario;

Power, Sep 1, 2004

This July, Calgary-based ATCO Power Ltd. and province-owned Ontario Power Generation brought online their jointly owned Brighton Beach 580-MW combined-cycle natural gas plant in Windsor (Figure 1). It is the largest independent power plant to be developed in Ontario since the province restructured its electric industry in May 2002.

Brighton Beach has two 7FA natural gas-fired combustion turbines from Atlanta-based GE with low-NOx burners, a triple-pressure (with reheat) GE steam turbine, and two heat-recovery steam generators of vertical-gas-flow design from AE Energietechnik (Steiermark, Austria). The new plant is on the site of the former J. Clark Keith Generating Station, which shut its doors in 1984 and was demolished in 1997. The plant is connected to the Ontario grid, via separate feeds, at the existing J. Clark Keith substation.

The plant staff accomplished some notable feats during the compressed commissioning schedule, including rolling the steam turbine to synchronization in only three days. Since going online, Brighton Beach has posted a perfect 100% availability record. "That's a remarkable achievement," explains David McGregor, maintenance and engineering manager, "because we went into a daily cycling operational regime right after commissioning." He attributes the plant's early success to the perfectionism displayed during the facility's design, construction, commissioning, and O&M preparation phases.

The co-owners of the plant have signed a long-term agreement with Calgary-based Coral Energy Canada, a member of the global Shell Trading network. Under the contract, Coral will supply gas to Brighton Beach and be responsible for selling the plant's output directly to large industrial and commercial customers and on Ontario's wholesale market. "The Brighton Beach power station is Coral's first long-term commitment to generation capacity in Ontario," says Debbie Wernet, president of Coral Energy. "We have been active in the Ontario natural gas market for several years, and now with power from the Brighton Beach plant we look forward to competing in the new, open electricity market as well."