A total of 81 AMP member communities in Ohio, Michigan, Virginia and West Virginia are participants in the project, which has been under development as a pulverized coal (PC) facility with ammonia scrubbing emission control technology.
The AMP Board of Trustees and AMPGS Participants determined it was in the best interest of the member participants to give termination notice to the engineer-procure-construct (EPC) contractor, emission control and other equipment vendors on pulverized coal construction and equipment.
The decision was the result of an approximately 37% increase in the EPC contractor’s indicated capital cost for the project including air emission control vendor costs. This increase over the indicated capital cost estimated in May 2009 made pursuing alternatives, including conversion to natural gas combined cycle and taking advantage of current power supply offers.
Marc Gerken, president & CEO of AMP, said: “We’ve been able to diversify our members’ power supply portfolio with our share of the coal-fired Prairie State Energy Campus (Illinois) scheduled to be online in 2011-2012 timeframe and additional hydroelectric generation.
“The conversion of this project from coal to natural gas combined cycle would reduce capital costs and fit well into AMP’s carbon strategy. With AMPGS, we found ourselves in the unique position of having a project that was solid from the participant, permitting and policymaker support perspective, but the new target price resulted in price projections with little or no margins compared to market power, calling into serious question the project’s economic benefit to participating communities.”
