The technology group Wärtsilä will supply the generating equipment for a new approximately 190 MW power plant to be built in Texas, USA. The order was placed by Lower Colorado River Authority, a river authority based in Austin, Texas providing wholesale power to the Texas power grid. The contract was booked as order intake by Wärtsilä in September 2022.Central Texas is experiencing rapid economic growth with a number of blue-chip companies moving into the area, along with a 30 percent increase in population between 2010 and 2020. This and similar growth in other areas of the state has created the need for additional generating capacity to meet the state’s growing need for power.The project will be a peaker power plant capable of starting and stopping rapidly to provide dispatchable power to increase reliability and provide power to balance the grid when renewable and other generational resources are not available or are insufficient to meet the needs of Texans.The plant will be located in Central Texas and will operate with ten Wärtsilä 50SG engines running on natural gas. It is expected to become fully operational in 2025. Each Wärtsilä engine consumes little to no water every week, which in Texas, an area often affected by drought, is an important feature.
The technology group Wärtsilä will supply the generating equipment for a new approximately 190 MW power plant to be built in Texas, USA. The order was placed by Lower Colorado River Authority, a river authority based in Austin, Texas providing wholesale power to the Texas power grid. The contract was booked as order intake by Wärtsilä in September 2022.Central Texas is experiencing rapid economic growth with a number of blue-chip companies moving into the area, along with a 30 percent increase in population between 2010 and 2020. This and similar growth in other areas of the state has created the need for additional generating capacity to meet the state’s growing need for power.The project will be a peaker power plant capable of starting and stopping rapidly to provide dispatchable power to increase reliability and provide power to balance the grid when renewable and other generational resources are not available or are insufficient to meet the needs of Texans.The plant will be located in Central Texas and will operate with ten Wärtsilä 50SG engines running on natural gas. It is expected to become fully operational in 2025. Each Wärtsilä engine consumes little to no water every week, which in Texas, an area often affected by drought, is an important feature.
