CPV St. Charles, Natural Gas-Fired Power Plant

The new power plant will generate enough electricity to power 700,000 homes and will use state-of-the-art technology to produce electricity efficiently and cleanly to help meet the region’s energy demands. CPV St. Charles is one of the cleanest natural gas facilities built in the Maryland Washington, DC region.

The 77-acre site is located adjacent to an existing asphalt plant, the Charles County landfill, and an existing power line. The plant’s innovative design employs a cooling system that uses reclaimed water from the Charles County Wastewater Treatment plant. This helps minimize the use of groundwater. This form of cooling required the construction of a pump station and 14 miles of pipeline. This task itself required extensive planning, engineering, and surveying efforts throughout preliminary design and construction.

Soltesz designed the reclaimed water line as a force main pipe. The main has working pressures ranging from a low of 30 psi and a high of 270 psi. The pipeline has restrained joints for the entire 14 miles; every joint uses internal restraint gaskets, plus Megalugs on the fittings to handle the extreme pressures. During construction, we resolved utility crossing conflicts and provided alternate designs. Soltesz was required to design field changes in a few locations where the boring casing did not get installed exactly per plan.

For the offsite pipeline, we provided water distribution system modeling, sewer system modeling, surveying, FSD/FCP, final engineering construction documents, erosion/sediment control plans, wetland permitting, NOI permit, and right-of-way mates/bounds descriptions.

Our team was a critical consultant for this project, providing extensive involvement in the local permitting and political zoning process.