Bellingham and Sayreville Project Milestones
Within a year after the move to Orlando, two critically important orders for cogeneration projects were obtained to help restore Westinghouse's position in the marketplace. Two identical PACE 300 (2-W501D5 gas turbine on 1-100MW ST) power plants were ordered by Intercontinental Energy Corporation, a private-power development company owned by the Roy family and located in Massachusetts. These were the Bellingham, Massachusetts, and Sayreville, New Jersey, cogeneration projects, and they were instrumental in restoring confidence in Westinghouse—to the outside world, to the new management of Power Generation Business Unit, and to CTO employees.
It is interesting to note that the prime competition for the Bellingham and Sayreville project orders, after the customer had already broken off discussions with GE or vice versa, was Fluor-Daniel Corporation, which was offering Siemens- Kraft Werk Union (KWU) V84.2 100MW gas turbines. In addition to some very effective negotiating skills on the part of Westinghouse led by Randy Zwirn and Reg McIntyre, KWU's relative lack of 60Hz experience was rumored to be a strong factor in the customer's decision to go with Westinghouse. This writer personally maintained technical liaison with the developer’s technical director, a member of the Roy family. Credit is also due to Joe Rumancik and his group for engineering support of the negotiating team, as well as to upper management support of the negotiation.
The Bellingham and Sayreville projects were developed under the rules of PURPA and the Fuel Use Act (FUA) of 1978. In the case of the Bellingham plant, the developer achieved Qualifying Facility (QF) status in a unique way by supplying a slip stream of exhaust gas to feed an adjoining process unit for production of beverage-grade CO2 sold to a nearby soda bottling plant.
For the Sayreville project, the owners found a more conventional means to achieve QF status—i.e. by exporting steam to a "steam host." The Sayreville plant supplies process steam to a nearby chemical plant.
Both the Bellingham and Sayreville plants were supplied by Westinghouse under turnkey contracts, as was another cogeneration combined cycle plant built around the same timeframe in New Jersey, the approximately 150MW Newark Bay Cogeneration facility, which uses two 46.5 MW W251B10 gas turbine units.