Hugo Plant
The Hugo Plant, a 450 net megawatt coal-fired generating unit located near Fort Towson, Okla., began commercial operation April 1, 1982. Water and coal are its primary ingredients in the production of electricity and huge volumes of both are supplied to keep the plant operating.

Water is taken from the Kiamichi River, downstream from the Hugo Reservoir, and is pumped through a 42-inch diameter pipeline to the 80-acre holding pond on the plant site. The water is cleaned in the water treatment plant before it is used in the boiler and cooling towers. The water treatment plant is large enough to supply the needs of a city with a population of 50,000 people. The Hugo Plant can use up to 11,000,000 gallons of water per day.

When operating at peak capacity, the plant can burn approximately 275 tons of coal per hour. That need is primarily supplied by the deposits of low-sulphur coal in the Powder River Basin area near Gillette, Wyoming. The coal seams there are thick enough to be economically surface-mined.

Coal is delivered to the plant by train and the1,340-mile journey from the mine ends at the plant as the railcars are emptied by the rotary dumper. Conveyors move the coal into the plant where it is ground to powder consistency and then blown into the boiler and burned.

The exhaust coming out of the boiler is cleaned before it is discharged through the 500-foot tall stack. An electrostatic precipitator removes lightweight fly ash to storage silos for sale as a concrete admixture. The heavier bottom ash falls to the bottom of the boiler and is transported to holding ponds. The exhaust gas coming out of the stack is constantly monitored to meet environmental guidelines.

Mooreland Plant
The first unit at the Mooreland Plant began operating on March 27, 1964; a second unit came on line on May 13, 1968; and the third unit first delivered power on April 29, 1975.

All three units were built by Westinghouse and have a combined output of 304 megawatts. Like other turbines and generators, they are powerful and heavy. Unit number one weighs about 400,000 pounds and is rated at 58,666 horsepower. Units two and three are rated at 166,666 and 180,000 horsepower respectively and weigh about 995,000 pounds each.

All units at the Mooreland Plant use conventional natural gas-fired boiler and steam turbine design. The Mooreland Plant, like the Anadarko Plant, is supplied with gas by WFEC's natural gas pipeline. At peak capacity, the three units would burn approximately 2,500,000 cubic feet of gas per hour.

Anadarko Plant
The Anadarko Plant first generated electricity in 1953. The original generator, a 15 megawatt Elliot, is still in operating condition on standby status. A second and third unit added later brought the capacity of the plant up to 74 megawatts.

The original plant uses a conventional gas-fired boiler and steam turbine method of power generation. The three units, two Elliots and one Allis Chalmers, have provided many thousands of hours of service and were the best of the available designs of their day.

In 1977, a new type of unit began operating at the Anadarko Plant. Called a Combined Cycle unit, the new design operates much like a turbofan jet engine on an airplane. These new units have attracted visitors from around the world who come to see first-hand the efficiency of the units. The new units added 300 megawatts of generating capacity.

The Combined Cycle units are so named because they combine gas turbine and steam turbine power to turn the generator. First, natural gas is burned as fuel and the hot; expanding exhaust is directed over the turbine blades causing them to turn like a jet engine.

The exhaust is then channeled into a small boiler where the heat creates steam that is piped into a steam turbine connected to the same generator as the gas turbine. This method gets the maximum amount of work out of the fuel by using as much of the fuel's energy as possible.

Each of the three Combined Cycle units is rated at 100 megawatts and weighs 831,297 pounds. They are housed in the newest portion of the Anadarko Plant, adjacent to the original plant. The original cost of building the total plant was $78,594,000.

Water for the plant is taken from Fort Cobb reservoir. About 2,000,000 gallons is used or recycled each day the plant is in operation. The water is demineralized for use in the boilers and treated with chlorine bleach for use in the cooling towers.

Fuel for the plant is delivered by WFEC's 357 miles of 16 and 8-inch diameter natural gas pipeline system which connects the plant to the rich gas fields in western Oklahoma. If operating at peak capacity, the total Anadarko Plant could burn 80,040,000 cubic feet of natural gas in a 24-hour period.