JOHN L. FEATHERSTONE PLANT
The John L. Featherstone Plant is the first new stand-alone geothermal plant in the Salton Sea resource area in 20 years and includes two of the largest production wells in the world. The Featherstone Plant is now selling its power pursuant to a 30-year power purchase agreement with Salt River Project, a municipal power and irrigation district in Tempe, Arizona.
OPERATIONS
The John L. Featherstone Plant is a world-class geothermal power generating facility located in the Imperial Valley of Southern California, within the Salton Sea Known Geothermal Resource Area (“KGRA”). The Facility employs a "triple flash" technology, similar to other plants in the Salton Sea KGRA and in other very robust geothermal resource areas. Hot, pressurized geothermal brine is brought to the surface from the production wells and energy is extracted by allowing the brine to cool slightly by releasing energy in the form of steam (“flashing”) by sequencing three controlled pressure reduction operations. The resulting steam is then processed and sent to the turbine generator and the remaining brine is further processed to remove mineral solids prior to reinjection.
Pioneered by EnergySource, new fundamental design elements allow for maintenance of its critical silica handling equipment while the plant is in full operation and these have proven to be robust and reliable. These innovations enable the on-line removal of corrosive silica solids, allowing the generating facility to increase the run time between major overhauls.
EnergySource strives to provide a safe work environment and our operations team recently celebrated over 1,000,000 megawatt hours of production without a lost time incident.