MOUNT PLEASANT UTILITIES

摘要

For years, the city of Mount Pleasant, in southeast Iowa, has had an interruptible power purchase agreement with its wholesale power A supplier, buying power at wholesale rates and re-selling it at retail rates to its customers. In the summer, as temperatures rose, the city's electric supply would get interrupted by the wholesale power supplier and Mount Pleasant Utilities would crank up an aging 7.5 MW steam turbine and 1 MW diesel gen-set to satisfy a portion of the demand. As local power demand grew throughout the 1990s, reaching nearly 20 MW during peak periods, the city's generation assets could not keep pace. In fact, in prior years, Mount Pleasant had to pay almost $1 million in capacity charges to cover the city's generation shortfall. The city decided to retire the steam turbine and install twelve new 2 MW diesel generator sets, using the savings in capacity charges to service the project debt Altorfer Power Systems, the local Caterpillar Dealer, served the role of general contractor on this turnkey project and assembled the team that constructed this power plant in less than nine months. "We are very happy with the plant Altorfer provided us and we found them very easy to work with," said Lori Glanzman, General Manager of Mount Pleasant Utilities.