POWER October 2021 - 37

TOP PLANT
health practices. The partnership helped
the project establish specific goals, strategies,
and performance measures to improve
safety performance.
In the end, the project finished with
more than three million work hours completed
and a very respectable safety record.
The OSHA Recordable Incident Rate
was 1.28 and the project's Lost-Time Accident
Rate was a remarkable 0.00.
During the construction phase of the
project, the Town of Beloit Fire Department
(BFD) visited the project site on multiple
occasions to become familiar with
the layout of the facility and to conduct
drills such as testing notification systems,
reviewing site access routes, and familiarizing
responders with emergency pathways
and possible dangers. These visits
enabled the BFD to understand the realworld
application of their safety training
for construction and operational facilities.
Additionally, West Riverside hosted an
Emergency Response Drill scenario with
the BFD to practice a rescue mission.
No Project Is Complete
Without Its Challenges
The plant was expected to be fully enclosed
before winter hit. However, cold
temperatures and snow arrived before all
permanent enclosures were completed.
Therefore, constructing the project while
dealing with frigid Wisconsin winter
weather during peak construction times
was one of the project's biggest challenges.
Construction crews were forced
to use temporary walls and doors on
buildings, as well as temporary heaters,
before permanent enclosures and heat
were available. Therefore, spaces had to
be regularly deiced and dewatered in order
for work to continue.
As a proactive measure, an earthen
berm was constructed on the southern
edge of the property to help mitigate
noise concerns to the south. The results
have been positive. Another aspect designed
to benefit the local community
was installation of a plume abatement
technology on the plant's cooling towers.
Plume abatement towers work by
passing outside air through a lower,
warm, wet section of the tower, where
it is heated. Above that, the cool, highhumidity
air flows past coils of warm
water from the circulating water system.
The two streams are then mixed together
before the cooling tower fans, where
the humid air is warmed and moisture is
greatly reduced by lowering the wet-bulb
temperature at the discharge of the fan
stacks. Alliant Energy had utilized this
October 2021 | POWER
technology on a slightly smaller scale at
its existing Riverside plant, but this was
the first time the company had used the
solution on a plant the size of West Riverside.
Still, the lessons learned from the
previous application helped make the
larger-scale installation a success.
To complicate matters for project managers,
the COVID-19 pandemic struck
while punch-list items were being checked
in early 2020. This forced social distancing
guidelines and other additional safety measures
to be implemented. Crews were divided
into small groups and spread across
the facility. Although an unexpected and
unprecedented challenge, the team managed
the safety protocols and continued
to make progress. Ultimately, care, custody,
and control of the West Riverside
facility was turned over to Alliant Energy
on May 15, 2020, and the station began
providing power to customers (Figure 1).
Substantial completion was declared on
July 22, 2020. Despite the challenges, the
project was delivered $30 million under
budget and was online in time to meet
increased summer demand.
Sustainability and Innovation
Several other aspects make West Riverside
notable. For example, Alliant Energy
integrated a 6-MWDC solar farm into the
project. The photovoltaic panels are located
on the southern portion of the site
where the laydown yard had been during
construction. The power generated from
the solar array feeds into the plant's auxiliary
electrical system offsetting house
loads and allowing additional power to be
supplied to the grid. The project team also
minimized the plant's auxiliary load by using
variable-speed motor drives, optimizing
lighting, and installing solar-powered exterior
lighting. As a result, West Riverside's
auxiliary consumption is nearly 75% more
efficient than industry standards.
The facility is designed to minimize
water use too. A pretreatment system is
used to soften well water coming into the
plant. This allows about eight to 10 cycles
in the cooling tower, compared to only
four or five cycles at the adjacent Riverside
Energy Center, which doesn't have
the same treatment system. Further, because
of Wisconsin's stringent nutrient
discharge limitations, the project team
undertook a phosphate reduction process
at both Riverside and West Riverside.
To further reduce makeup water
needs, West Riverside collects stormwater
by routing treatment building downspouts
into the cooling tower basin. This
is estimated to reduce freshwater use by
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POWER POINTS
Winning Attributes
✔ The West Riverside Energy Center
added reliable, flexible, and
dispatchable power generation to
Alliant Energy's fleet.
✔ West Riverside integrates a
6-MWDC
solar farm that feeds into
the station's auxiliary electrical
system, offsetting house loads and
permitting additional power to be
supplied to the grid.
✔ Sustainability is a key aspect of
West Riverside. The plant earned
the Envision Platinum rating for
sustainable infrastructure-the
highest Envision recognition level.
about 70,000 gallons annually.
" This facility is one of the most efficient
natural-gas facilities in the nation, " said
Bob Newell, project manager for Alliant
Energy. " Designed and built for efficiency
and long-term sustainability, it features
the latest technologies and state-of-the art
water treatment processing equipment. In
addition, we can rapidly adjust its output
to meet demand. It's a nice complement
to our growing clean energy investments. "
The sustainability features implemented
at West Riverside have not gone unnoticed.
The Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure
(ISI) recognized the project by granting it
the prestigious Envision Platinum rating for
sustainable infrastructure. The Envision rating
system is a comprehensive framework
of 64 criteria encompassing a full range of
environmental, social, and economic impacts
to be assessed in order to determine
how a project has incorporated sustainability
into its design, construction, and operation.
The Platinum rating is the highest
Envision recognition level.
" We are proud of the recognition our
West Riverside Energy Center continues
to earn for its sustainability design
and infrastructure, " said David de Leon,
president of Alliant Energy's Wisconsin
energy company. " This facility is a result
of the strong partnership with the Beloit
community, HDR (our owners project
engineer) and AECOM along with a number
of their subcontractors. Earning this
recognition demonstrates our commitment
to delivering reliable and affordable
energy to our customers, while building
stronger communities. " ■
-Aaron Larson is POWER's
executive editor.
37
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POWER October 2021

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