Wednesday, July 10, 2013CARROLLTON, Ohio -- Carroll County Energy LLC announced today that it intends to construct an $800 million natural-gas fueled electrical plant here that would produce enough electricity to power 700,000 homes.
The company is a subsidiary of Advance Power Services (NA) Inc., an energy development company based in Boston, whose parent is Switzerland-registered Advanced Power AG, which also has offices in London and the Slovak Republic.
Carroll County Energy said the project would create 500 construction jobs and 25 to 30 full-time positions.
The project site is 77 acres about 2.5 miles north of Carrollton and a half-mile east of state Route 9. The land is adjacent to land owned by the Carroll County Community Improvement Corp., which is zoned for industrial and commercial use. The interstate Tennessee Gas Pipeline is nearby and will bring natural gas to fuel the plant.
"This facility can be aptly described as 'efficient generation from a small footprint,'" said the project’s manager, Jonathan Winslow, in a prepared statement.
The plant will employ GE Energy's natural gas and steam turbine technology in a configuration referred to as “combined-cycle.”
This configuration captures waste heat and generates additional electricity, according to the announcement. The facility will produce 50% of the carbon dioxide and less than 10% of the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide that a conventional coal-fired power plant produces to generate the same electricity.
"With Ohio's electricity needs continuing to grow and some 5,800 megawatts of conventional coal-fired plants scheduled for retirement by the end of 2015 in Ohio, Carroll County Energy will help fill our generational needs with clean natural gas," Winslow said.
Carroll County has emerged as the center of oil and natural gas exploration in the Utica shale, a rock formation deep beneath eastern Ohio.
Winslow said the company could enter an Enterprise Zone Agreement that would provide, long-term, stable tax revenues that would benefit Carroll County schools and other programs. Significant economic benefits could result from purchases of goods and services, including payments for water and sewer services, he added.
Winslow said the project is in the process of completing environmental studies and will be applying for and obtaining the necessary permits.
Advanced Power AG is a privately owned company "whose mandate is to develop, own and manage power generation and related infrastructure projects throughout Europe and North America," according to its website. The company says it was developed lmore than 9,400 megawatts of power generation projects and "$4.6 billion of limited recourse project financing.
The parent company says it has a "strategic relationship with Siemens Project Ventures and an agreement with GE Energy to "develop combined cycle natural gas power plants and utilize GE's highly flexible and efficient turbine technology for Advanced Power's North America power generation projects."
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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