MIDLAND COGENERATION VENTURE ( MCV )
In the early 1970s , developers broke ground on a proposed two-unit nuclear plant in Midland , MI . Ultimately the project was abandoned in the 1980s as nuclear power fell out of favor — but rather than demolish the still-unused site , a decision was made to repurpose the plant and make use of its untapped potential and many on-hand assets . Since 1990 that plant has operated as the Midland Cogeneration Venture ( MCV ), the largest cogeneration plant in the United States , a vital source of energy for the Midwest United States and Manitoba , Canada .
Assets for growth While the Midland site may have been built to originally house nuclear power generation , today it stands as an impressive example of the potential of clean energy through steam and natural gas , housing multiple turbines that help MCV reliably provide up to 1,633 MW of power to the grid for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator ( MISO ) and adjacent industrial customers .
“ We have 12 gas turbines , two steam turbines , one back pressure steam turbine and six package boilers ,” says Brian Vokal , Vice President of Operations for Maintenance and Engineering at MCV . “ All of this allows us to continuously meet our contract obligations and we are very proactive in scheduled outages — we ’ ve had over 99 percent availability to our contracts since 2008 .”
A key part of that availability comes from the multiple redundancies built into the site , including its two 400 + megawattproducing steam turbines that together are an invaluable asset for MCV operations . “ The way the plant is configured , we can only operate one or the other at a time — this is the only plant in the world with a spare 400 MW turbine built into the design of the plant ,” Vokal explains . “ Whenever we take an outage on one of our steam turbines , we operate the spare . So for the past 25 years , our contract availability to our customers has been over 99 percent , which is world class , and it ’ s because we take advantage of all the assets we acquired from the abandoned nuclear project .”
54 August 2015