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JEA Breaks Prior Plant-Building Safety Records at Brandy Branch
Jacksonville, FL (October 18, 2004) - With construction virtually complete, JEA can tout the safest power plant construction project on record at the utility - a project also completed about three months ahead of schedule.
JEA and its contractors, including Birmingham-based construction contractor BE&K, have worked on the Brandy Branch Generating Station project since 2002 - logging in more than one million hours - with a recordable injury rate (RIR) of only .96. This compares to an average RIR of 7 percent for construction projects nationwide and JEA's target of 4.0 RIR on the job.
"Simply put, a construction worker would be seven times more likely to get injured on a job site than here at Brandy Branch," said JEA Project Manager Mike Lawson. "Given the danger and complexity involved with power plant construction, it is really incredible and very rare to have a RIR of less than one percent on a big job like this."
JEA's Brandy Branch Generating Station, located about 20 miles west of downtown Jacksonville, will be fully operational within next four months. Construction crews have been converting two turbines powered by natural gas, to allow steam produced by the two to power a newly-constructed, steam-powered turbine.
"This allows JEA to produce nearly 50 percent more electricity with no additional fuel costs, so it's a very cost-effective way to add more generating capacity with virtually no new emissions," said Lawson.
Final testing is under way now as the $191 million conversion project winds down. When the plant is fully on-line, it will produce up to 690 megawatts of power, which in itself would provide enough power for a city of more than 300,000 people.
Additional environmental controls will also be added to further reduce nitrogen oxide emissions (already low, since natural gas is so clean burning), and JEA will also begin using a new, cleaner-burning diesel fuel for the natural gas turbines. Environmentally, the Brandy Branch Station will continue to be one of the cleanest power plants in the world.
JEA is the eighth largest community-owned electric utility in America, providing electric, water and sewer services to more than 750,000 accounts in Northeast Florida.
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