Riverside Repowering Project

Riverside plant before MERP	Riverside plant after MERP - preliminary artist's rendition

The Riverside generating plant has been a fixture and visible presence in Minneapolis since 1911, and it remains a critical source of electricity for downtown Minneapolis and the surrounding communities. The Riverside Repowering Project involves repowering our existing Riverside coal fired power plant with a natural gas combined cycle power plant.

Combined cycle turbine design

A natural gas-fired, combined-cycle plant produces electricity by two processes instead of one. Natural gas is used as the fuel in a combustion turbine, which operates on technical principles similar to a jet engine. Exhaust gases from the combustion turbine are also used to make steam in a heat recovery steam generator. Both processes then drive turbines and electric generators to produce electricity. Integrating combustion turbine and steam turbine technology provides an extremely efficient electricity production process. Combined-cycle technology is about 60 percent more efficient than a traditional coal-fired steam power plant. The repowered plant will include two new combustion turbines with corresponding heat recovery steam generators and a repowered steam turbine.

The new unit will operate more cleanly and efficiently than the existing coal-powered units. As a result, air emissions will be significantly reduced — please see the fact sheet (482K PDF) for more details. At the same time, electricity output from the Riverside site will be increase by approximately 73 megawatts — enough electricity to supply more than 70,000 typical homes.

Project schedule

Steam generator section lift	Riverside generator building construction