Dominion Resources and Peoples Energy announced plans to expandElwood Energy LLC’s peaking gas-fired power plant in Elwood, IL, byan additional 600 MW. The expansion to the state’s first merchantpower facility will double the capacity to 1,200 MW and is thesecond phase in a process that is expected to eventually bringtotal capacity of the plant to 3,100 MW. The $230 million expansionwill add four General Electric 150 MW gas-fired turbines.Construction to add the high efficiency, low-emission turbines willbegin this summer and be completed during the summer of 2001, intime to meet peak summer demand. The Elwood facility is locatedadjacent to several interstate gas pipelines that provide access tocompetitively priced gas supplies. The facility’s generatorsinterconnect to a high-capacity Commonwealth Edison transmissioncorridor that provides delivery to Midwest power markets. Contractdiscussions with potential purchasers of Elwood’s expanded outputare underway, but details are not available. Existing production issold under multi-year contracts with Commonwealth Edison and EngageEnergy US, LP. Elwood’s existing 600 megawatts of capacity wasplaced in service in July 1999. When fully built, Elwood would beIllinois’ largest merchant facility.

DTE Energy Technologies, an unregulated subsidiary of DTE EnergyCo., reached a distribution agreement with Waukesha, WI- basedGENERAC Power Systems, a manufacturer of prepackaged standby powersystems for homes and small businesses. DTE will market theprepackaged Generac GUARDIAN product, which provides fullyautomatic standby power for homes and small businesses, as well ascustom-designed engineered systems for larger commercial andindustrial customers in Southeastern Michigan. The standby powersystem operates on natural or LP gas with rated power ranges of 6kilowatts (kW) to 40 kW. Each unit includes an automatic transferswitch, which transfers household current to the generator whenutility power shuts down. Once power is restored, the electricalload automatically is switched back to the utility power source.The fully enclosed transfer switch is mounted in close proximity tothe home’s main circuit breaker panel and serves as a relay stationduring a power failure. At the core of its distributed generationproduct suite, DTE Energy Technologies is the four-state (Michigan,Illinois, Ohio and Indiana) distributor of the Plug Power fuelcell, which will be available and marketed to residential customersin early 2001.

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