With the increasing cost of capital for constructing new power plants, and the need to reduce power plant emissions, electric utilities are looking at less costly alternatives of repowering, upgrading and retrofitting their older power plants. By upgrading and repowering older power plants, asset owners are able to increase efficiency, add capacity and reduce emissions. Besides improving a plant's operation, the cost of upgrading and repowering older power plants is substantially less than developing a green-field project. In addition, the time and cost for permitting and modifying a plant is less. According to Ray Sensenig, director of fossil services, Parsons E&C, in many areas of the U.S., power plant upgrades are only done to meet state mandates for reducing NO{sub}x and SO{sub}2.
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