AES Southland Projects

Long Beach and Huntington Beach, California

Kiewit was awarded contracts to rebuild and modernize natural gas power plants in Huntington Beach and Long Beach, California. The projects, Alamitos Energy Center and Huntington Beach Energy Center, were designed to help California meet its clean energy goals and provide a reliable source of electricity. When complete, the plants will serve as lower-profile, more efficient natural gas-fired combined cycle generation stations.

The engineering for both projects was completed by the same team simultaneously, which was a first for Kiewit. This approach led to refined engineering processes including holding common pre-design conferences and using one 3D model for both plants.

As an alternative to once-through cooling, which diverts water from oceans and other bodies of water to cool steam, the Huntington Beach and Alamitos Energy Centers contain air-cooled condensers where steam from the steam turbine exhaust is condensed inside air-cooled, finned tubes. This eliminates the need for ocean water, saving millions of gallons of water annually.

As part of its foundations scope of work, Kiewit performed design-build services for over 3,500 18-to 24-inch ACIP columns plus 5,000 18-inch grouted inclusions for two future power generation sites. Ground improvement work included 132,000 square feet of soil mixing for liquefaction and lateral spread mitigation; panels varying from 23 to 67 feet long, 3 feet wide at a depth of 26 feet.