26 March, 2002 - Kansas City, Mo. Black & Veatch announces it has joined with Barton Malow in a joint venture agreement under the name BVBM-Hunterstown to provide full design, procurement, delivery, construction, startup, testing and initial operation of the Reliant Energy Hunterstown, LLC power project.

The plant is being built adjacent to an existing substation on a 307-acre parcel of land in Straban Township, Adams County, Pa., approximately one mile from Hunterstown, Pa. and approximately five miles from Gettysburg, Pa.

The plant will be equipped with an air-cooled condenser to reject heat from the steam cycle, thus reducing the overall project water consumption to less than one tenth of the water used from natural gas powered generating facilities using conventional wet cooling towers.

The Hunterstown power project will use one of the largest air-cooled condensers on a combined cycle power plant in the United States. Reliant is developing the plant in an effort to enhance reliability and availability of electrical service to the surrounding region.

The plant features a 3-on-1 combined cycle design composed of three GE 7FB gas turbine generators; three triple-pressure reheat cycle heat recovery steam generators (HRSG), each equipped for supplemental duct firing; and one reheat condensing steam turbine generator for a total nominal capacity of 800 MW. The combustion turbines will be designed to fire natural gas and will be equipped with dry low NOx burners. The HRSGs will be equipped with a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system to control NOx emissions.

The facility's electrical output will be fed into an adjacent, existing 500 kV substation that is being expanded to accommodate the interconnection. Commercial operation for the plant is scheduled for June 2003.