Dominion Power 2009 Annual Report Download - page 22

20 Dominion 2009
broken out by maps of each of our three operating
units, beginning on page 4 and continuing through
page 11. Among those expected to make substantial
future contributions are:
Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center in Southwest
•
Virginia, which is more than 50 percent complete.
Once operational in 2012, the $1.8 billion clean-
coal station will be able to generate 585 megawatts
and will be one of the cleanest coal generating facili-
ties in the nation. Among other features, it will use
renewable wood biomass for at least 10 percent of
its fuel.
Bear Garden, a 580-megawatt natural gas-fired
•
facility that is half complete. It is estimated to cost
about $619 million, and operation is expected in
2011.
Two major electric transmission projects in
•
Virginia—the Meadow Brook-to-Loudoun line and
Carson-to-Suffolk line—which are on schedule
to be in service in 2011. They are the two largest
of 11 projects representing about $877 million of
investment qualifying for enhanced rates of return
(12.65–12.9 percent) set by the Federal Energy Regu-
latory Commission (FERC). Regulators want to pro-
mote needed investment in essential infrastructure.
Dominion Cove Point, one of the nation’s larg-
•
est liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities, which,
in 2009, completed a successful expansion that
increased output by about 80 percent. This world-
class natural gas import facility with ready access to
both the customers and the storage areas that make
up the world’s largest natural gas market has three
customers—BP Energy, Royal Dutch Shell and Sta-
toil Hydro—which contract Cove Point’s capacity
to unload, store and process LNG. They pay Do-
minion for their full contracted amount of capacity
regardless of whether they actually use it. A subsid-
iary of Statoil Hydro ASA has contracted for all of
the new capacity. In early 2010, we began modi-
fying and upgrading the facility’s offshore pier to
enable it to receive the world’s largest, most modern
LNG ships.
Appalachian Gateway, a natural gas pipeline proj-
•
ect that we began seeking regulatory approvals to
construct, is designed to transport gas produced in
West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania to stor-
age fields and pipelines in Pennsylvania. Marcellus
Shale and traditional production have increased the
natural gas available from the Appalachian Basin.
This project would lessen the bottleneck preventing
some West Virginia and Pennsylvania gas production
from getting to customers in the Northeast and mid-
Dominion Cove Point, one of the na-
tion’s largest liquefied natural gas
facilities, in 2009 completed a suc-
cessful expansion that increased
output by about 80 percent.
Natural gas transmission
pipeline expansions are
another critical part of our
business plan.
The 1937 construction of
New York State Natural
Gas’s Line No. 8.