Mid-April start set for LEPA plant construction

The groundbreaking for construction of the new Louisiana Energy and Power Authority natural gas-run power plant slated to come to the city will be April 17, Morgan City Mayor Frank “Boo” Grizzaffi said.
The plant is being constructed on Youngs Road between the horse arena and Joseph Cefalu Sr. Municipal Steam Plant.
In October 2013, about $120 million in revenue bonds were approved to pay for construction of the plant that will also service Houma, Jonesville, Plaquemine, Rayne and Vidalia. The scheduled completion date of the project is in late September 2015, LEPA General Manager Cordell Grand said. Morgan City has a 10-megawatt share in the 64-megawatt plant.
The city’s power usage peaks around 47 megawatts. The city can get about 20 megawatts from LEPA’s Rodemacher Plant in Lena and can access power through the grid.
The combined-cycle gas turbine plant will be much more efficient than city’s steam plant, Grand said.
One of the main factors that led to the plant’s development was due to transmission constraints in parts of Louisiana undermined municipalities’ ability to purchase low-cost power for communities that operate their own electrical systems, former Morgan City Mayor Tim Matte said in October. Putting the plant near Morgan City and Houma’s load should help alleviate those transmission constraints, and will allow the participating communities to actually export excess power, Matte said.
Grand said no water intake structures for cooling of the plant will be required. “We’re going to end up using wastewater from the city’s wastewater facility for cooling purposes,” Grand said.
The plant will also have black-start capability, which means no external power is needed to start the plant’s generator, Grand said. “What we’ll have is a small generator on the side that you can start up without any external power. And then it’ll be used to start up the bigger unit,” Grand said.
That small internal-combustion unit will be sufficient to start the plant if power lines go down during a hurricane and no other power is available, Grand said.