Elk Station 2 & 3
Abernathy, Texas
Region Texas & Louisiana
Energy/Industrial
Project Team
Owner Golden Spread Electric Cooperative Inc.
Lead Design Firms/Structural/Civil/MEP Kiewit Engineering & Design Co.
General Contractor TIC-The Industrial Co.
Heavy Civil/Concrete Kiewit South Central
TIC in April 2016 completed Elk Station 2 & 3 for Golden Spread Electric Cooperative, near Abernathy, Texas. Work included design and construction of two 380-MW, simple-cycle power plants that use two General Electric 7FA.05 combustion turbines with a grid-switching switchyard. It supplies power to both the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The team designed two independent units that can generate power to both the SPP and ERCOT grids, which required an elaborate protection scheme and redundant, hard-wired interlocks to ensure the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) interconnections remained separate at all times.
Both units were built between May 2015 and April 2016, with 94% of work taking place in 10 months. “TIC had to earn 40% of the work in two months in order to achieve schedule,” says Clint Barnes, project engineer at TIC. “Typically, we don’t like to see any months over 6%. The 12-month construction and start-up schedule was very tight.” Judges were impressed by the team’s management of a “very demanding deadline,” despite setbacks, including Winter Storm Goliath, which brought 50-mph winds and 11-ft snowdrifts across the site.
