Mississippi Power has pushed back the in-service date for its Kemper County Energy Facility carbon capture and storage project to the last day of 2016. The plant had previously been expected to reach full operations by the end of November.
“The one-month extension is needed because on Wednesday, Nov. 2, Mississippi Power determined a maintenance outage on gasifier A was needed to make improvements to the ash removal systems,” the utility said in a press release Friday. “During the outage for gasifier A, the company plans to bring gasifier B online in order to implement necessary testing ahead of the production of electricity with syngas.”
The additional time will enable Mississippi Power to reach electricity on the plant’s gasifier B, finish outage operations and restart power production on gasifier A, and wrap up integration of all systems needed for Kemper’s two turbines to generate electricity with syngas, the release says.
The maximum cost projection for the project has increased by $25 million since the prior report to the Mississippi Public Service Commission, according to the release. It did not cite a total amount, but said Mississippi Power and parent company Southern Co. would pay all expenses.
In an Oct. 28 monthly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Mississippi Power said the facility would cost up to $6.91 billion.
The facility was originally due to begin full operations in May 2014 at a cost of $2.4 billion.
The project, a new-build, pre-combustion CCS facility near the city of Meridian, has been producing energy with natural gas for two years, and recently produced electricity with syngas. Once fully operational, the plant will use Mississippi lignite, a low-rank brown coal, to produce electricity. It will employ a custom integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) system and CCS technology to produce carbon emissions roughly equal to that of natural gas. The CCS and IGCC portions of the plant are not yet online.
