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KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Oct. 7, 2016) — The City of Denton, Texas, has awarded a contract to Burns & McDonnell for comprehensive engineer-procure-construct (EPC) services for the new 225-megawatt (MW) Denton Energy Center. The new natural gas-fired power facility will feature reciprocating engine technology configured to provide flexible, fast-start power to Denton Municipal Electric Utilities as the city-owned utility progressively integrates more renewable power resources into its network.

The plant will feature 12 18-cylinder Wärtsilä 18V50SG engines in a new power facility that will be designed and built by Burns & McDonnell. Each engine can be dispatched separately to balance power demand as needed. The City of Denton receives approximately 40 percent of its power supply from renewable energy and intends to move toward 70 percent renewable energy by 2019.

“Burns & McDonnell has been serving the public power industry for more than 100 years so we are proud to help the City of Denton meet its goals to become one of the greenest cities in America by turning to renewables as its source of baseload power,” says Rick Halil, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the power generation group for Burns & McDonnell. “Reciprocating engine technology is an excellent way to help them meet this objective. Burns & McDonnell has designed and built a majority of the utility-scale reciprocating engine projects in the country as more and more utilities turn to reciprocating engines to balance their power needs.”

Engineering design is already underway and construction will begin in early 2017. The engines and related equipment are expected to be delivered during the second half of 2017 and the plant will begin commercial operation by July 2018.

The Denton Energy Center will be one of the most flexible and efficient generating facilities in the industry due to its modular nature in which each Wärtsilä engine can be dispatched independently to quickly scale output up or down with minimal sacrifice in peak efficiency. The flexibility will become increasingly important as Denton continues to add more intermittent wind and solar power to its energy portfolio. The plant will also be one of the cleanest natural gas-fired facilities in the industry as it will utilize selective catalytic reduction to minimize pollutants. 

About Burns & McDonnell

Burns & McDonnell is a company made up of more than 5,300 engineers, architects, construction professionals, scientists, consultants and entrepreneurs with offices across the United States, in Calgary and Toronto and throughout the world. Burns & McDonnell is ranked as the No. 1 Power engineering design firm by Engineering News-Record magazine and is ranked No. 14 overall among the Top 500 engineering design firms. We strive to create amazing success for our clients and amazing careers for our employee-owners. Burns & McDonnell is 100 percent employee-owned and is proud to be No. 16 on Fortune’s 2016 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For.