CILCO, Caterpillar Construct Cogen Project

CILCO, an AES company, and Caterpillar reached a multi-product service agreement that will result in construction of a 45 MW cogeneration plant in Mossville, IL. The new plant, to be called AES Medina Valley, will be owned and operated by a subsidiary of CILCORP and will supply electricity, steam heat and chilled water service to Caterpillar's Mossville Performance Engine Products Division Plant and electricity to Caterpillar's Mapleton Foundry.

Construction of the $51 million plant starts in April, and the companies expect the plant to be finished in June of 2001. Steam service to Caterpillar should start in December, allowing retirement of the Mossville facility's coal-fired steam plant.

The new Medina Valley cogeneration plant will use three Titan 130 combustion turbines produced by Solar Turbines, a Caterpillar company, and a conventional steam turbine to produce electricity. Heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) will capture waste heat from the combustion turbines to generate steam. A gas-fired boiler will generate additional steam. Most of the steam will heat Caterpillar's Mossville facility in the winter. Some steam will be used in the summer to produce chilled water through steam absorption chillers.

The cogeneration plant will have a capacity of 45 MW of electricity, 410,000 pounds per hour of steam and 7,200 tons of cooling capacity.

"Building relationships through delivering on our commitment to customers has earned us a reputation as a trustworthy and reliable energy partner. We look forward to continuing to bring competitively priced energy and related services to our largest customer, Caterpillar," said Scott Cisel, CILCO vice president. "We are also pleased to be adding this low-cost, environmentally friendly generation capacity to CILCO's portfolio of electric supply."

AES Corporation, the world's largest global power company, acquired CILCO in October 1999. Founded in 1981, AES is dedicated to supplying safe, clean, reliable electricity to meet energy needs around the world. AES owns wholly or in part 119 plants providing 42,983,000 kW of generating capacity in 16 countries. The company also distributes electricity in 6 countries through 14 distribution businesses, and supplies heat and electricity to retail markets. Through its retail electricity supply businesses, AES sells over 110 billion kWh to more than 15 million customers.

Edited by April C. Murelio
editor@poweronline.com