At the forefront of environmental regulation worldwide, Californians have pioneered almost every piece of legislation aiming to keep pollution in check and natural resources plentiful. Binding targets for increasing renewable capacity, stricter-than-anywhere limitations to power plant emissions, ban on wasteful cooling systems in power generation… the list is long and thorough. This puts a huge pressure on the power generation technology to develop and adapt to the ever-tightening standards, but all of it is for the greater good. The Modesto Irrigation District (MID hereafter), a community-owned utility dedicated to supply a reliable stream of water and power to the city of Modesto and its surroundings, has been operating since 1887. In year 2011, the growing power needs made it necessary for MID to enlarge its locally-owned power generation portfolio, then consisting of roughly 150 MW of baseload power capacity, supplied by combined cycle gas turbines and hydro plants; plus another 200 MW of peaking capacity, supplied by simple cycle gas turbines. In order to ensure that renewable energy intermittency was not an issue, MID acquired a state-of-the-art Wärtsilä plant, powered by six fast-start Wärtsilä 20V34SG gas engines, providing up to 49.6 MW. The Woodland 3 Generation Station, as it was named, can supply anywhere from 4 to 49.6 MW to the grid in less than 8 minutes, based on the real-time needs, and all of it without any loss in efficiency. The plant can withstand multiple starts and stops without any extra cost or impact on maintenance, which makes it much more effective at responding to intermittency issues.

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