Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 30, 1990 TAG: 9005300060
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Botetourt proposal has been kept secret since the state Air Pollution Control Board reported the start of air testing for an electricity generating plant more than a year ago.
A backer of the independent 330-megawatt plant planned near Gala said Tuesday he knew his group was not in the running when Virginia Power recently announced negotiations with developers for three smaller projects. The three were chosen from a field of 78 applicants.
Virginia Power has not identified the three winning applicants, but backers of the Botetourt site recognized "our quotation was not a winner" when they heard the capacity of the three projects, according to Zachary Robinette, a spokesman for the owners.
Robinette, who works in the Greenville, S.C., office of Fluor Daniel, a national engineering firm, still has hopes that the Botetourt location will be used in the future. "I think someday it will make a good site for a power plant," he said Tuesday.
Several people who live near the proposed Gala site have said they oppose a power plant because they want to keep the rural character of the land along the river.
Coal for electric power generation could be easily shipped from West Virginia mines to the site along the CSX rail line.
Robinette declined to report the name his group used in its application to Virginia Power, and the Richmond utility has not identified the names of applicants. The names and locations of the three winning projects will be announced in mid-June, according to Carl Baab of Virginia Power.
Virginia Power has an extensive program to buy electricity generated by other companies. Last year, the utility accepted bids for a number of small generating projects.
Robinette's group has bought land at the Gala site under the name of Haden Farms Inc. Haden once was a station on the C&O Railway near the proposed plant site.
"We kept it pretty quiet because we didn't think it was news and we still don't," Robinette said. He did not identify any other principals in the company.
The application for the James River site could be renewed in a few years.
Baab said his company has planned its needed capacity through 1997, "but it will be only a year or two before we have to plan beyond 1997."
The three winning projects were selected on the basis of an economic analysis, including looking at prices and capital costs, Baab said. The sites selected are a 205-megawatt, coal gasification cogeneration unit, a 196-megawatt, pulverized coal cogeneration unit and a 41-megawatt, municipal waste-to-energy plant.
Virginia Power also plans to build its own 400-megawatt, coal-fired plant at one of three sites being evaluated in Mecklenburg, Greensville and Cumberland counties. The combination of company and non-company projects is the most economic and reliable means of meeting projected power demand between 1995 and 1997, said Larry Ellis, a Virginia Power senior vice president for power operations and planning.
by CNB