After being delayed by environmental and mechanical hang-ups,Nevada’s first gas-fired merchant power plant, El Dorado, located40 miles southeast of Las Vegas got up and running over the weekendand officially opens May 4, according to Reliant Energy, one of thejoint venture partners in the project. It is a $280 million, 480 MWcombined-cycle plant, co-owned by Sempra Energy.

Originally scheduled to come on line early this year, El Doradowill sell power into the Nevada, California and Southwest markets.It is located in a major interstate transmission corridor fornatural gas and electricity. The start-up delay was caused by aturbine defect, according to a Reliant spokesperson.

El Dorado will consume about 75 MMcf/d of gas, delivered by LasVegas-based LDC Southwest Gas Corp. from interstate suppliesthrough both Kern River and El Paso Natural, both of which areconnected to Southwest in the general vicinity of the new plant.

Reliant, which owns a number of older merchant plants itpurchased in the past three years in California, has someaggressive plans for building new plants in Nevada and Arizona aspart of other joint ventures that could add up to another 2,500 to2,900 MW of gas-fired generation, the company said. Reliant has apreliminary agreement with Arizona-based Pinnacle West to pursue upto three gas-fired plants — two in Nevada and one in Arizona.Separately, Reliant has another proposed merchant plant at CasaGrande, west of Phoenix that is being delayed by local water andenvironmental concerns.

If definitive agreements are worked out, Reliant will becomehalf owner of the first two units at Pinnacle West’s four-unit RedHawk gas-fired generation plant in Arizona, and Pinnacle will take50% of Reliant’s proposed 500 MW Apex power plant near Las Vegas.The two could also be partners in a third, unspecified merchantplant that Reliant is looking at possibly siting in northernNevada.

For Sempra’s power plant developer subsidiary, Sempra EnergyResources, this is its maiden voyage into the merchant power plantfield, although it has another plant proposed in California on ajoint basis with Occidental Petroleum.

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