Electric Facilities:

Custer Street Energy Center

The General Electric Frame 5 turbine /generator at the Custer Street Energy Center was purchased used from a Union Carbide Plant in New Orleans, Louisiana in late 1998. The unit was rebuilt and placed into service on June 1, 1999. Built at a cost of $8.2 million, the Custer Street Energy Center also features a 22-megawatt distribution substation, serving rapidly growing industrial loads in the City's I-43 Industrial Park and other west side developments.

The Custer Street Energy Center’s Combustion Turbine/generator is used for supplying peaking power to the City of Manitowoc, and can be used for emergency power in the event of a blackout.

The turbine is similar to a jet engine, and can be run on either diesel fuel and natural gas. The turbine is started with a 500 horsepower, 12 cylinder Detroit diesel engine.

Basic equipment for the turbine/generator includes a compressor, combustor, turbine, and generator. The rotating compressor sucks in atmospheric air, pressurizes it, and forces it into the combustor, or furnace, in a steady flow. Fuel forced into the compressed air burns, raising the temperature of the mixture of air and combustion gasses. This high energy mixture then flows through the turbine, dropping in pressure and temperature as it does work on the moving turbine blades. Combustion gasses leave the turbine at atmospheric pressure and high temperature.

The turbine is connected on a common shaft with the compressor and rotates at 5,100 revolutions per minute. The generator is connected to the turbine shaft through a reduction gear, which revolves at 3,600 revolutions per minute.

The compressor has 17 stages of fan blades, sucking in a tremendous amount of air through a series of inlet filters. The combustor has 10 burners oriented in a radial configuration. The turbine has two stages, and consumes 180 gallons of fuel per hour at full load.

MPU’s combustion turbine/generator is also equipped with water injection into the combustion chamber to control nitrous-oxide emissions, and silencers on both the intake and exhaust stacks to control noise.

The Custer Street Energy Center combustion turbine/generator can be started and deliver electric power in about seven minutes. Full output of 24.5 megawatts can be achieved in fifteen minutes. The 13,800 volt generator output is connected to the electric system through underground cables to the adjacent distribution substation. The unit has the capability to be “black started”, meaning that no auxiliary power is needed to start the unit.