On April 9th, Tampa Electric broke ground on multiple projects in its environmentally friendly expansion of the Polk Power Station. Julio Friedmann, deputy assistant secretary for Clean Coal for the U.S. Department of Energy was the featured speaker. Gordon Gillette, president of Tampa Electric and Peoples Gas; Tom Hernandez, vice president of Energy Supply, Tampa Electric; Robert Beltran, Southwest Florida Water Management District; and Wayne Holden, president and CEO of RTI also spoke at the event and provided additional insight on the innovative projects underway at Polk Power Station.
Tampa Electric is expanding Polk Power Station by about 460 megawatts, or enough electricity to power more than 100,000 homes. This expansion will convert the four existing simple-cycle natural gas units to a more efficient combined-cycle unit. At the peak of construction, the project will employ about 500 people. The project also will improve transmission reliability and dramatically reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide of the company’s system.
Polk Power Station is one of the world’s few integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) power plants. It is also home to several other innovative projects, including:
- The Regional Reclaimed Water Partnership Initiative water transmission pipeline, a partnership with the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the cities of Lakeland and Mulberry, and Polk County.
- Warm gas clean-up demonstration project, a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy and RTI, being hosted at Polk.
Construction on the Polk expansion will be complete by January, 2017.
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