A Seattle alternative energy company is seeking changes for a proposed $700 million natural gas power plant it acquired last year in Palmdale as the function of the plant has changed and the value of cooling water has increased. Summit Power Group is working with the California Energy Commission and the Antelope Valley Air Quality Management District to amend the permits it received for the 650-megawatt co-generation plant to be built on 50 acres along Avenue M on the border with Lancaster. Summit would purchase the property from Palmdale, which owns a total of 600 acres at Sierra Highway and Avenue M, adjacent to U.S. Air Force Plant 42. The neighboring city has raised a stink, however, and has opposed the plant from the beginning, citing air quality issues and greenhouse gas emissions that the plant would produce. Tom Johns, vice president of project development with Summit Power, said the plant would not operate round the clock, but only at times when solar power generation was not possible and when needed for early evening peak loads. “A project like Palmdale is designed basically to start quickly and fill that gap in between the renewable generation and serve that load,” Johns said. Summit Power anticipates a draft permit from the air district by the end of next month, while the state Energy Commission will issue a staff opinion on the project in April. Public comment will then be taken on both documents with a final decision coming at the end of the year, Johns said. Provided that Summit Power receives the amended license and air permit, construction on the power plant would start next year, and go on line in late 2019 or early 2020, he said. The combined cycle power plant would use natural gas to produce energy from a turbine. The heat given off from that process would be used to boil water to generate steam that spins a separate turbine to create additional power. The Antelope Valley economy would benefit from the more than 300 construction jobs and a payroll of $120 million, Johns said. “During the life of the project, there will be 23 operating jobs and 50 indirect jobs,” he added. “It will provide millions (of dollars) in local services.” John Mlynar, a spokesman for Palmdale, said the project will bring much needed tax dollars to help support schools, law enforcement and other city services. Additionally, the power plant will bring to the city-owned vacant property the “lifeblood” of natural gas, power generation and water infrastructure that is needed to spur development there, Mlynar said. Already the city has taken inquiries about the vacant land that would be near the proposed plant, he added. “It is going to make that corner a hot commodity and something that we will leverage,” Mlynar said. The Palmdale project represents a new generation of power plant. It will not be a base-load plant that operates nearly 24 hours or a peaker plant that comes on only during maximum electricity consumption times. Instead, it is flexible capacity, designed to provide energy when other sources cannot, Johns said. “Typically, we would expect a plant like this to operate 30 to 40 percent of the time,” he said. The plant will use two combustion turbine generators made by German manufacturer Siemens AG. They are the same type of generators used in the first two flexible capacity plants opened in the United States – in Lodi in 2012 and at the El Segundo Energy Center in 2013. Jeff Logan, a senior energy analyst with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., said when it comes to new power plants there has been a shift toward natural gas, solar and wind and away from coal-fired plants, which are dirtier and more expensive to operate. As recently as 2008, about 50 percent of U.S. power generation came from coal plants. That figure is now down to 35 percent. The intermediate-type plant that Summit Power is proposing works well in conjunction with variable renewable power sources, he said, adding that one benefit is they can be started up and shut down fairly quickly. “You don’t need to go through an elaborate process,” he said. “Within 10 minutes, they can be pumping power into the grid.” Altered history Originally, Palmdale planned to build the power plant. But the Great Recession forced the city to sell the project for about $27 million to privately held Summit Power, which has built and operated natural gas, solar and wind projects across the country. The Environmental Protection Agency and state Energy Commission approved a license for the power plant in 2011. The commission gave its OK on transferring ownership to Summit Power last June. The company, in the meantime, had filed a petition with the commission to amend its power plant license. Major modifications include eliminating the solar component, replacing a wet cooling tower with a dry cooling method that uses less water and reducing the size of the site to 50 acres from 333 acres. A dry cooling method works like a radiator in a car – a closed loop system with fans that move air over the water. While dry cooling is more expensive and less efficient than a wet cooling tower, which uses reclaimed wastewater, the change would eliminate a steam plume coming from the plant. Also, it means the facility will use about 400 acre feet of water a year compared with 4,000 acre feet for a wet cooling tower, Summit Power’s Johns said. “In the western U.S. where there are concerns about water it is the right thing to do,” Johns said. “You don’t see many proposed plants using wet cooling anymore.” Dry cooling technologies are becoming more commonly found in natural gas power plants even though it is not as an efficient method, said the energy lab’s Logan. At this stage, Summit Power is answering questions and providing additional data to the Energy Commission. A site visit by agency staff followed by an informational hearing about the modifications to the license took place in Palmdale in November. A committee made up of two commissioners and a hearing officer will make a recommendation to the full five-member commission to either approve or reject the proposed changes. Neighborly concerns The city of Lancaster received approval in September to intervene in the license modification request before the commission, but its concerns about the project go back further. In December 2013, Lancaster opposed the transfer of emission credits for air pollutants to the Antelope Valley Air Quality Management District from two neighboring districts. The transfer was approved in a 4-3 vote by the air district board. Despite that history, Summit Power’s Johns is optimistic about having a good working relationship with Lancaster going forward. “Even though they have intervened, it has been a positive type process where they wanted additional information and concerns they wanted to get on record,” he said. Lancaster officials declined to comment on their objections to the power plant. In documents filed with the Energy Commission, the city outlined that it wants to intervene for environmental reasons because it claims the plant would harm the city and state as a whole. “The proposed project directly affects the City of Lancaster’s air quality,” the petition to intervene states. “And the project’s potential greenhouse gas emissions would cancel out Lancaster’s hard work to foster low-carbon resources.” Over the past few years, Lancaster has pursued solar farms to locate within its borders. City leaders hope to create the first “net zero” city, which produces more energy than it consumes. Issues raised in Lancaster’s first data request filed in October include why the existing license should be modified rather than filing for a new one as well as requests for pollution control standard analysis on combustion sources and greenhouse gas emissions and estimates of sulfur hexafluoride emissions from circuit breakers. In its response, Summit Power gave to Lancaster a report that it filed with the EPA detailing emissions of the plant and plans to minimize their release into the air in accordance with agency standards. The company intends to use methods such as injecting ammonia into the exhaust stream of the catalytic reactor and mixing air prior to injection into the combustion chamber to reduce emissions. To curb the release of sulfur hexafluoride from six circuit breakers in the electrical switchyard, enclosed and pressurized circuit breakers will be used in addition to a leak detection system, the report says. Lancaster said in a status update to the commission that it would have additional questions and data requests after the Antelope Valley Air Quality Management District issues its preliminary determination of compliance.