Texas oil refinery powers third of operations with solar energy

Flint Hills Resources announced it will be building its second company-owned solar installation to help power its U.S. refinery operations. The new solar installation will provide electricity to the company’s Corpus Christi West refinery, which produces jet fuel, ultra-low sulfur diesel and gasoline, in addition to the chemical-building blocks used in thousands of everyday products.

The project is believed to be the second-largest utility scale solar complex in the Corpus Christi area and the first solar project in Texas to provide onsite, self-generated electricity directly to an oil refinery. Under optimal conditions, the solar installation is expected to satisfy nearly one third of the refinery’s power needs.

“We continue to improve our refinery operations and make progress toward our vision of being the best refining company in the industry,” said Jeff Ramsey, President and CEO of Flint Hills Resources. “We are proving that large-scale solar can be successfully integrated into large, complex industrial facilities, helping to lower costs while maintaining reliability and improving our environmental performance.”

When complete, the 27-MW solar project will be located on approximately 100 acres of the company’s property across the west refinery complex off of Interstate Highway 37 in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The array is expected to have a peak capacity of roughly 28% of the refinery’s power needs. The estimated costof this project is $53 million. Scottsdale, Arizona-based DEPCOM Power has been selected as the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the project. Both Flint Hills Resources and DEPCOM are subsidiaries of Koch Companies.

“This is an uncommon project and exciting opportunity to integrate solar directly into a large refinery complex, reliably and at a lower cost than conventional, retail power,” said John Schroeder, DEPCOM’s executive VP of distributed energy. “You don’t often see utility-scale projects for a single facility and while this may be among the first projects of its kind at this scale in Texas, it won’t be the last. Distributed solar generation is proving to be a competitive and reliable source of power for many energy-intensive industries.”

The Flint Hills Resources Corpus Christi solar installation will be the refinery’s second source of on-site power generation. The refinery also operates a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system, which provides about 30 MW of electricity. The CHP’s cogeneration of electricity and steam is more efficient than producing them separately, and on-site electricity generation avoids the energy losses associated with long-distance transmission, transformationand distribution of utility supply. At peak capacity, CHP and solar installation together could satisfy up to 60% of the Corpus Christi West refinery’s daily power needs. The solar project also improves energy efficiency by locating generation closer to where the power is being consumed, which avoids line loss.

News item from DEPCOM