The $180 million Faribault Energy Park is a 300 megawatt (MW) combined-cycle facility that generates “green” electric power and runs on natural gas, rainwater, vegetable oil and excess wind turbine heat. This blend of natural gas and sustainable materials generates roughly 97 percent fewer harmful emissions than a traditional coal plant, and can power 265,000 homes per day. The 35-acre park also serves as an asset to the community by providing awareness and education on alternative energy sources such as solar and wind, and offering family-friendly activities such as site tours or fishing from one of the several ponds on the site.
For the Energy Park, we performed a variety of nondestructive examination services, including weld examinations on various piping and vessels, inspecting a 325,000-gallon aboveground fuel oil tank, adding isolation valves to underground fuel oil piping, and collecting topographical data associated with an aboveground storage tank containment berm and calculating its volumetric capacity.