We Energies is about two months away from starting operations at its newest liquified natural gas (LNG) facility in Ixonia. Construction on the $192 million facility started in 2021. The company expects to see $200 million in savings once the new LNG plant is online next February.
There is another LNG plant in Bluff Creek, which cost $180 million to complete. During a media tour Friday, representatives with We Energies explained LNG facilities are more cost effective and efficient than older plants.
We Energies’ older Oak Creek LNG facility takes two years to fill, whereas the new technology in the Ixonia plant allows for maximum storage capacity to be reached in just a few months. The Ixonia facility is also four times larger than the older Oak Creek plant.
“It gives you the ability to generate and dispatch the gas more freely when you need it and not hold back for the worst of the worst,” said
Andy Hesselbach, senior vice president of gas operations at We Energies.
The lifespan of the new facility is expected to easily be 50-plus years, according to Hesselbach. Seven full-time employees will staff the plant.
There are three main buildings that can be found on the Ixonia property: one for heating the gas, one for cooling it and one for storing/maintaining it.
WE Energies brings in gas from a pipeline right at the edge of the property. Once the gas is contained, it is cooled down to -260 degrees. The gas is then transformed into a liquid that looks similar to water. Once needed, the liquid is pumped back out and heated to 120 degrees. This causes the liquid to expand 600 times its size as it returns to a gas state. It is stored in a 150-foot-tall metal tank until needed.
“It’s your YETI (cooler) on steroids,” said Hesselbach. “It’s double-walled. You’ve got an inside wall of plated steel that welded together and another welded steel tank on the outside.”
The gas is eventually pumped out to homes and businesses in southeastern Wisconsin via an underground pipe system. The Ixonia LNG facility can hold up to 12 million gallons of liquified natural gas at a time.
“If you think back to the cold weather we had last December, we had to interrupt some of our public accounts,” said Hesselbach. “If these facilities had been in place, we would not have had to curtail the customers who did public appeals. Those are the types of events where we want to have these kinds of facilities in place.”
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