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Georgia Power will install cooling towers similar to this new one at Plant Branch at its McDonough and Yates plants at a combined cost of $175 million. Photo courtesy of Georgia Power. Click here to enlarge image 

## Power Engineering 

# Georgia Power's New Cooling Tower Design Reduces Environmental Impact 09/01/2001 By Steve Blankinship, Associate Editor Georgia Power has begun full commercial operation of a $40 million cooling tower at Plant Branch, the company's third largest coal-fired generation station. The cooling tower is the culmination of an agreement between Georgia Power, the state Environmental Protection Division (EPD), the U.S. EPA and the Sierra Club to resolve the issue of hot water discharges from Plant Branch into the Beaverdam arm of Lake Lanier. The company signed a memorandum of agreement with the organizations, clearing the way for construction of the cooling tower. The memorandum of agreement represented the settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and allowed the compay to eliminate a bottleneck in the water discharge permitting process. "The tower will alleviate fish kills during periods of very hot summer weather," said Chris Hobson, Georgia Power's vice president of environmental affairs. "The helper cooling tower, which differs from the standard type colling tower in that it sends the water back into the lake rather than recirculate water back to the plant, will reduce temperature of the discharges by about 20 degrees. Hobson emphasized that the company has been working for years to address the issue of hot water discharges, even before fish kills were reported in 2000 and 1998. Construction began in July 2000 and the tower became operational this summer, a full nine months before the company was required to have it up and running. The cooling tower is 884 feet long, 96 feet wide and 55 feet high. It features four pumps pumping 100,000 gpm and 32 fans to cool the plant's discharge water. The tower, provided by GEA, starts and stops when the plant's flow-weighted discharge temperature exceeds or falls below 94 degrees F, respectively. The tower modulates from zero cooling to cooling about half of the plant's total discharge based on the heat rejection of the plant. This cooling of the discharge is designed to provide a "zone of passage" for the fish in the Beaverdam section of the lake. At full tower operation, the cooling tower consumes about 18 MW. Georgia Power will perform biological studies during the summers of 2002 and 2003 to demonstrate that the tower will protect fish next to Plant Branch, even when the plant is operating at full capacity during the hottest summer weather. Similar cooling towers will be built at Georgia Power's Plant McDonough near Smyrna, Georgia and Plant Yates near Newnan. The total cost of the cooling towers at plants Branch, McDonough and Yates will be about $175 million. The tower designs at McDonough and Yates will be very similar to the Branch design. In addition to the cooling tower, Plant Branch has added $10 million in clean air controls since 1990 and will add at least another $14 million by May of 2003. LOGIN OR REGISTER USING



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# Page 3 of 3 Georgia Power's New Cooling Tower Design Reduces Environmental Impact
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