The Dania Beach Energy Center is a 1.16GW gas-fired combined-cycle power project intended to replace two of Florida Power & Light Company’s (FPL) ageing combined-cycle units at Lauderdale power plant site in Dania Beach, Broward County, Florida, US.

Construction on the £685m ($888m) project is expected to be started in 2020, while commissioning is expected in mid-2022.

Upon completion, the Dania Beach Energy Center, to be equipped with the world’s biggest and most efficient gas turbines, is expected to generate 280MW more than the old plant, while improving fuel efficiency by 22% and reducing primary air emissions by 70%.

The new combined-cycle plant is also expected to provide reliable base load power at a significantly lower cost to approximately 250,000 households, resulting in an estimated total net savings of $337m for FPL’s customers in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties.

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Project background and development details

The Lauderdale plant, which started power generation in 1927, was the first power plant to be operated by FPL, which is now the principal subsidiary of NextEra Energy.

Although the last two operating units (units four and five) of the plant were repowered for combined-cycle operations in 1993, the steam turbine generators and associated equipment used by the units dated back to the 1950s.

FPL filed for approval of the Lauderdale power plant modernisation, also known as the Dania Beach Clean Energy Center project, to the Florida state authorities in 2017.

The units four and five of the Lauderdale plant have been retired and are currently being dismantled as part of the site preparation for the new plant, after the Florida Cabinet and the Governor approved project certification for the new facility in December 2018.

Dania Beach Energy Center plant make-up

The new facility will be developed with a single combined-cycle generating unit, named Dania Beach Clean Energy Center Unit 7, on 134 acres in the existing Lauderdale power plant site.

The new combined-cycle unit at the site will be equipped with two 7HA.03 heavy-duty gas turbines from GE, which will be paired with two new heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) and a single new steam turbine generator.

The Dania Beach power plant will use natural gas as primary fuel, which will be transported to the site through an existing pipeline. Ultra-low sulphur distillate (ULSD) will be used as back-up fuel, which will be trucked and stored in existing fuel oil tanks at the site.

The plant will be equipped with dry-low NOx combustion and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technologies for pollution control.

The new combined-cycle facility will utilise once-through cooling system and will source cooling water from the nearby Dania Cut-Off Canal, which was also the source of cooling water for the pre-existing plant.

The new facility will utilise the existing transmission infrastructure at the site for power evacuation.

GE 7HA.03 turbine details

The GE 7HA.03 combustion turbines to be used at the new Dania Beach power plant is the latest model in the HA series gas turbines, which was launched by GE in October 2019. With 430MW single-cycle output and more than 64% net combined-cycle efficiency, GE claims it to be the world’s biggest and most efficient 60-hertz gas turbine till date.

The 7HA.03 turbine can generate 134MW more power and offers 0.4% more efficiency in the 2x1 combined cycle configuration, compared to its predecessor 7HA.02 turbine.

The new turbine features a larger titanium R1 blade row, which allows greater airflow through the compressor and leverages on GE’s latest DLN 2.6e combustion technology to allow higher firing temperatures while keeping emissions under control.

The 7HA.03 turbine, designed to operate on a wide range of gas and liquid fuels such as shale gas, ethane, hydrogen, diesel, and crude oil, offers more fuel flexibility than the 7HA.02 turbine.

It also offers greater operational flexibility with a ramp rate of more than 75MW/minute to reach full gas turbine load in ten minutes, compared to the 65MW/minute ramp rate of the 7HA.02 turbine.

The 7HA.03 turbines can reach full combined-cycle plant load in less than 30 minutes and can be quickly turned down to 30% load in emissions compliance mode.

Lauderdale power plant details

The Lauderdale power plant was originally developed as a coal-fired power plant on a 392 acre-site in Dania Beach in 1927.

The power station was refurbished with two new steam turbine generators and associated equipment in 1957.

Further, both the steam units of the plant were upgraded to two separate gas-fired combined-cycle generating units with the installation of four gas turbines and four HRSGs, in 1993.