Duke Energy Buys 22 Acres For Turbine Power Station

SATSOP, WA-Duke Energy of Houston has purchased a 22-acre site at Satsop Development Park in Grays Harbor County for development of a 630-megawatt gas-fired turbine power station on the site. Duke paid $5 million for the site, located 30 miles east of Olympia, WA, The seller was Energy Northwest, a coalition of 13 public utilities formerly known as the Washington Public Power Supply System, which hopes to operate the plant when it’s complete.

The station, along with a 50-mile pipeline to bring natural gas to the site from the Interstate 5 corridor, will be constructed at a cost of $250 million, Rich Fernandez of Duke’s Global Asset Development office tells GlobeSt.com. It will replace a once-planned pair of nuclear plants envisioned by Energy Northwest for the area. “We hope to have the plant and the pipeline in operation in 2004,” Fernandez said.