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The decision to proceed
with power-plant construction in Louisa County came after nearly four years
of study and review regarding possible site selections. Old Dominion focused
on different sites in Virginia and Maryland before deciding to explore
building a peaking plant in Louisa County. Construction began on the Louisa County facility in June of 2002, and it began commercial operation in June of 2003. This plant consists of five simple-cycle combustion turbines with a total potential output of 510 megawatts. A simple-cycle combustion turbine consists of a compressor, turbine and generator. Ambient air is compressed to a higher pressure, mixed with fuel and ignited in the combustors, the resulting expanded gas drives the turbine. The turbine turns the generator, which produces electricity. The plant site includes the five combustion turbines (each with its own stack, generator, and step-up transformer), a water storage tank, fuel oil storage tanks, an electrical substation, a maintenance/office building and other ancillary facilities. These combustion turbine units burn natural gas as the primary fuel, with low-sulfur fuel oil as a backup source. Gas-fired combustion turbines are ideal because they are able to produce power quickly with low emissions when the demand for electricity is the greatest, like on the hottest and coldest days of the year. Because this facility is be a peak-generation power plant, it only operates approximately 75 days a year, typically on the hottest and coldest days of the year. As a generation cooperative serving nine member distribution cooperatives in Virginia, Old Dominion’s peak demand on the Virginia Mainland is expected to more than double by 2017, according to integrated resource-planning studies. Because the generation component of Virginia’s electric utility market is deregulating, Old Dominion strongly believes it must secure reasonable and cost-efficient energy sources through contracts, alliances or generating stations to meet its future power supply needs. With more than 362,000 metered cooperative customers on the Virginia mainland, Old Dominion must focus on meeting future peak-generation capacity needs today. Otherwise, individual electric cooperative customers could face a future of higher electric bills and decreased power reliability. The peaking power generated from the Louisa County facility is added to the Old Dominion power grid to serve its nine member distribution cooperatives on the Virginia mainland. Rappahannock Electric Cooperative serves more than 9,900 customers in Louisa County, over 8,200 customers in Orange County, and 1,520 customers in Albemarle County.
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