DG Clean Power, LLC
Conn. firm seeks OK for Billerica power plant
By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, December 23, 2006
A Connecticut energy investment firm is seeking Massachusetts environmental regulators' approval to build a $230 million electric generating station in an industrial corner of Billerica , the biggest power plant proposal now pending in Massachusetts.
The plant would be run only during periods of peak electric demand, such as hot summer afternoons or cold winter evenings. It would burn chiefly natural gas but could switch to ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel as a back up. The eight planned turbines could produce, starting in the summer of 2008, up to 480 megawatts of electricity, or enough to supply 360,000 average-sized homes.
New England power grid officials have for years been trying to promote, along with energy conservation, these kind of "peaker" plants. They would stave off the oft-cited threat that parts of the region, especially the northern Boston metropolitan region and southwestern Connecticut, could in coming years be forced to endure Third World-style rolling blackouts to ration insufficient power.
But fumes and noise from the plants can generate opposition. Energy entrepreneur Jim Gordon, backer of the 130-tower Cape Wind proposal for Nantucket Sound, is facing intense criticism from Chelsea leaders over his proposal for a 250-megawatt fuel oil-powered peak power plant on Chelsea Creek, several hundred feet from an elementary school.
In contrast, a top local official said, the Billerica proposal -- from Montgomery Billerica Power Partners LLP of Burlington, Conn. -- may arouse considerably less opposition because it would sit among a sewage treatment plant, a junkyard, an animal rendering plant, and a vacant liquor warehouse. The Billerica Avenue site is near where Billerica, Chelmsford, Lowell, and Tewksbury meet.
"I haven't heard any really strong objections, and I tend to listen for them very carefully," Billerica's state representative, Democrat William G. Greene Jr. , said in an interview yesterday. "It isn't a bad spot, and it would be a big boon for the tax base if it goes through." Greene said project developers had met with local selectmen, but few people in town know much about the project.
If the plant were assessed for tax purposes at $200 million, that would generate over $4.8 million a year in property taxes under Billerica's commercial and industrial tax rate. That would increase local tax collections about 6 percent, state Revenue Department data show.
Montgomery Billerica representatives could not be reached by phone yesterday. In a filing with the state Environmental Policy Act office, they said the project would involve a 31,350-square-foot building, 70 feet tall, on 13.9 acres of land, well clear of a 200-foot-wide Concord river buffer zone. Construction would begin in November. The site is near high-voltage electric lines and a natural gas pipeline.
The environmental application said the plant could use as much as 500,000 gallons of water a day. Montgomery Billerica said it is investigating using treated waste water from the 5-million-gallon-a-day Billerica sewage plant.
At 480 megawatts, the Billerica project is the biggest pending generation plan in the Bay State, according to a recent listing by Independent System Operator New England, the Holyoke organization that runs the six-state power grid. Cape Wind is rated at 462 megawatts.
An ISO spokesman, Dominic Slowey , said late yesterday that the agency doesn't lobby for specific projects like the Billerica or Chelsea plans but agrees they need to get built soon. "Plants like this are needed throughout New England to run during times of highest demand," Slowey said. "We need plants that operate under normal conditions, and we need peaking plants that operate in times of high demand, and we need them particularly close to areas of high demand like Boston and southwestern Connecticut."
Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.
