More than 170 tons of materials have arrived at our old North Pole Power Plant over the past few of weeks. Employees have been anticipating the shipments as they contain the parts for a new regenerator.

We're replacing one of two regenerators in our old North Pole Power Plant. Regenerators capture waste heat from the turbine, and use that energy instead of fuel, to dramatically increase turbine efficiency. In fact, the regenerator saves us about 30 gallons of fuel per minute when the turbine is operating at full capacity.

To put this in perspective, the turbine consumes 83 gallons per minute without a regenerator and 54 gallons with one. So, while the cost of this project is noteworthy ? $12 million ? the payback is significant.

The estimated lifetime of a regenerator is 120,000 hours, but we were able to run the one we're replacing (installed in 1996) for about 180,000 hours. In essence, we got every last dime out of it.

Almost all work associated with the installation of the new regenerator is being done in-house. As of today, the project is ahead of schedule.