STRICTLY BUSINESS: DEJA VU? AECI POWER PLANT PLANNED

A new power generation plant is planned for Southeast Missouri.

A Stoddard County site near Idalia is one of the sites being considered for a 100-megawatt power plant being planned by Associated Electric Cooperative Inc., headquartered at Springfield.

Deja vu?

Yes and no!

It was scarcely two years ago a similar announcement was made by AECI and PanEnergy Corp. of Houston, Texas.

The 1996 announcement also concerned a proposed generation plant, and the Stoddard County site near Idalia was one of three sites considered.

That project -- a $100 million, 250-megawatt power plant -- is under construction and expected to be in operation by mid-1999, near AECI's existing transmission lines west of Glennonville in Dunklin County on the east side of the St. Francis River.

Siemans Power Corp., the U.S. arm of Siemans Power Generation Group, is overseeing construction of the 250-megawatt plant under contract with the AECI-Duke Energy partnership.

AECI will reserve 125 megawatts of that plant's capacity to meet its future capacity needs. The partners plan to sell the project's other 125 megawatts on the open market.

"The 100-megawatt plant is the second power plant planned by AECI," said David Burton, an AECI spokesman.

The newest 100-megawatt plant, a $30 million facility, is a "completely different facility," said Burton. AECI has a turn-key contract with Westinghouse Co., which will oversee the construction and installation of the new $30 million facility.

The newest facility will be a simple-cycle, gas-fired combustion turbine to generate electricity.

"The new plant won't be running all the time," explained Burton. "It will be a peaking turbine, providing power for peak periods, like the recent hot-weather conditions which resulted in increased demands."

AECI provides wholesale power to six regional and 51 local cooperatives in Missouri, Oklahoma and Iowa, serving more than 680,000 homes and businesses, representing 1.8 million individual consumers. The new facility will be used to improve the reliability of the AECI system.

Features of the newest power plant will include the main generation, a substation and various support buildings.

Transmission of the primary fuel for the plant -- natural gas -- will be provided by a subsidiary of Duke Trading & Energy, through the existing pipeline near AECI transmission lines. The limited amounts of water needed for the power plant will come from on-site wells.

A simple-cycle combustion turbine is basically a jet engine, fueled, in this case, by natural gas, which spins a generator. This type of combustion turbine, explained Burton, can be started and shut down more quickly than coal-burning units, affording more flexibility, "making this an excellent system for responding to peak power demands."

The two sites being considered for the 100-megawatt facility include Stoddard County and a site in Butler County along state Highway 51, a mile east of Fagus.

"Either of these locations are viable sites," said Burton. "Both have natural gas pipelines and AECI pipelines in the same area."

The Rural Utilities Service will be host to a public meeting concerning the most recent proposal, scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m. July 23 at the Stoddard County Courthouse in Bloomfield.

The proposal is available for public review at the Bloomfield Public Library and at AECI offices in Springfield.

The new facility is expected to go on line about the same time as the AECI-Duke power plant, next June.

Associated Electric includes a power facility near New Madrid.

Hold lottery tickets

Don't throw those old "Scratchers" lottery tickets away.

You may not have a winner on the scratch-off ticket, but you still have a chance of winning some big prizes with the tickets in the Missouri Lottery.

Some 300 Missourians will enjoy the "Summer of the Century," a promotion by the Missouri Lottery.

The special promotion is designed to increase lottery ticket sales and for the Missouri Lottery to express its appreciation to lottery participants.

The "Summer of the Century" works like this:

Participants submit "scratcher" game tickets -- games 206 through 232 (numbers on the back of tickets) -- and on-line lottery tickets sold from June 15 through Aug. 14, for three summer drawings.

More than 253,000 tickets were received for drawing number one, which was held July 6. The next drawing will be held July 27, with the final drawing on Sept. 8.

A total of 100 names are drawn in each session. Winners choose trips to one of five dream spots -- London, Paris, Jamaica, Hawaii, and/or Orlando, Fla., home of Disney World.

A Cape Girardeau family was a winner of one of the drawings in 1997.

Lottery officials say that lottery ticket sales increase each year during the summer promotion.

In the meanwhile, don't expect to find any loser scratch-off tickets littering the ground around lottery sales areas -- they are being snatched up before they hit the ground, sales clerks report.

B. Ray Owen is business editor for the Southeast Missourian.