The 310 MW public sector power plant that received final state approvals earlier this month, Magnolia Power Project, owes its status as the first baseload facility to be built in years in the center of the Los Angeles Basin to a readily available and flexible natural gas and water infrastructure that could only be found at an existing urban power plant site in a heavy industry sector.

In this case the Burbank, CA, location north of LA is on the strongest end of Southern California Gas Co.’s system, and the water system in operated by the plant developer/operator, the City of Burbank Water and Power Department, one of six munis that will draw supplies from Magnolia.

While the project is financed by an A-credit-rated public power financing arm, the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA), a state-chartered joint powers authority established more than 20 years ago, the purchase of 40 MMcf/d of gas supplies will be handled by the six munis (Anaheim, Burbank, Cerritos, Colton, Glendale and Pasadena), all of which have been buying wholesale supplies for decades.

Bringing the supplies to the plant, however, will be through the existing SoCalGas system for which Burbank has traditionally contracted for capacity to serve its existing array of five small gas-fired peaking units still operating at the 23-acre site.

“We will use a little more gas, but the important thing is that we’re in the northern end of the SoCal system, which happens to be the strong end of their system,” said Ron Davis, the Burbank muni’s general manager, who is overseeing the construction and operation plans for Magnolia, which breaks ground in June and is scheduled to start commercial operations in the summer of 2005.

“This area used to be heavy industrial, so (SoCalGas) built its system to support that heavy industry, which has subsequently migrated away. Overall, Burbank power loads are back to where they were before Lockheed and other heavy industry left. So the gas system is strong. When there are curtailments on SoCal’s south system down in San Diego, they’d still be moving gas to interruptibles on this (north) system.”

While the Magnolia Project was originally conceived (by Davis) in 1999 prior to the western energy meltdown, the criteria that Burbank and eventually the other munis through SCPPA established are the same ones merchant generators use, Davis said. “We needed a unit that would run and be cost-effective on a marginal cost basis,” he said. “So what we wanted is something that will run most of the time. To do that, you have to be both clean and economic. This was critical in the pre-power crisis days, too.”

Current and projected future natural gas wholesale prices will add to the project’s challenges, said Davis, noting that the coalition of munis will have to start buying gas somewhat differently, and likely they will be doing some level of buying more than 80 % of any given year. Right now, Burbank’s peakers only require a lot of buying in the summer.

Water was the other critical concern, forcing Davis and his planner to look for ways to minimize added water in the always-drought conscious arid Southern California climate. They overachieved, Davis said, developing a use of reclaimed and purified water that results in no increased water use at the site.

“We’re not only using reclaimed water for cooling, but for pure water, too,” Davis said.”Steam boiler units need lots of pure water — you can’t use any nasty or salty water in them. Boilers evaporate lots of water, so you need very, very pure water, like distilled water. (Bad water can ruin a boiler in a matter of hours.). Water is municipal in Burbank, and we have a wastewater treatment facility that we use to distribute reclaimed water in the city.

“We’ll also use it in our cooling towers, so we have a plant on site to turn reclaimed water into pure water. That means all of the water, except for drinking water for the crew, is reclaimed water made pure. Our net increase in water for this new power plant is zero.

“As far as I know there is nothing like this (water use) anywhere in the world.,” Davis said.

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