RICHMOND, Va., March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Dominion Virginia Power today welcomed the Virginia State Corporation Commission's approval of a 580-megawatt power station to help meet the projected growth in demand for electricity from its 2.3 million customers.
The $619 million, combined-cycle power station will be in Buckingham County, Va., about 60 miles west of Richmond. The unit, which will be fueled primarily by natural gas with oil as a backup, is scheduled to begin operation by the summer of 2011. Named the Bear Garden Power Station, the project is expected to generate 500 construction jobs and 25 full-time positions when operating.
Bear Garden will be a 2-on-1 unit, in which two combustion turbines generate electricity and exhaust heat produces steam to generate additional electricity.
Bear Garden, under Virginia's regulatory treatment, receives a 1 percent incentive atop the company's base return on common equity for being a combined-cycle combustion turbine. The incentive will apply through the construction and the first 10 to 20 years of the station's service life.
"We are pleased with the decision and the SCC's recognition that new generation is needed in Virginia," said Mark F. McGettrick, president and chief executive officer of Dominion Generation. "Virginia imports more electricity than any other state except California and an over-reliance on imports is inconsistent with the needs of our customers and the goals of the Virginia Energy Plan.
"Bear Garden will be one more component in our balanced portfolio, along with energy conservation and other new generation and new technologies, to meet the growing demand from our customers," McGettrick said, noting that customer demand is projected to grow by about 4,000 megawatts during the next decade.
Dominion Virginia Power is a subsidiary of Dominion , one of the nation's largest producers and transporters of energy, with a portfolio of more than 27,000 megawatts of generation, 6,000 miles of electric transmission lines, 14,000 miles of natural gas transmission, gathering and storage pipeline, and 1.2 trillion cubic feet equivalent of natural gas and oil reserves. Dominion also owns the nation's largest underground natural gas storage system and operates more than 975 billion cubic feet of storage capacity and serves retail energy customers in 12 states. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's Web site at http://www.dom.com/.
