CHEYENNE – Governor Matt Mead announced the opening of the application process for researchers and potential tenants at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center (ITC). The ITC is being built at Basin Electric Power Cooperatives’ Dry Fork Station near Gillette. Its goal is to advance Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) technologies.
“Every day, scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs around the world are making advancements in carbon utilization and storage technologies,” said Governor Mead. “There is no better place to bring the best and brightest to test these cutting edge technologies than in Wyoming. The Wyoming ITC will be an incubator for game-changing technology and energy evolution.”
The Wyoming ITC issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) to identify candidates and select initial users of test bays. Interested parties may obtain and submit applications at www.wyomingitc.org. Applicants will need to go through a secure login process, creating a username and password to obtain and upload the RFP.
The RFP gives interested parties the opportunity to “lease,” at no cost, a test bay with flue gas slipstream from a coal-fired power plant in a competitive process. The ITC provides developers of advanced post-combustion CO2 capture technologies a place to test equipment and processes in a real-world commercial facility.
Individuals and groups in private industry, government agencies, government laboratories, university faculty and staff may submit proposals
The ITC will provide space for researchers to test CCUS technologies using 20 MW of actual coal based flue gas to be split among one large test bay and five smaller test bays. The large test bay will have access to flue gas equivalent of 5 MW to 18 MW. Today’s RFP is for large test bay applicants.
RFPs will be reviewed and a selection made by a technical advisory committee made up of Wyoming ITC partners including the State of Wyoming, Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Proposals are due to the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority by December 12, 2016. The ITC is expected to be available in late 2017.
The NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE was previously announced as the first tenant of the Wyoming ITC. The Carbon XPRIZE is a global competition designed to spur breakthrough technologies that convert the most CO2 into one or more products with the highest net value. A total of forty-seven entries from seven countries were submitted earlier this year to contend for the $20 million prize – twenty of these entries are competing for space at the Wyoming ITC. XPRIZE will announce those advancing to Round 2 in October 2016. Finalists from Round 2 advancing to Round 3 will be named in December 2017.
For more on the ITC and information on the process, please visit www.wyomingitc.org or contact Jason Begger, Executive Director of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority, at jason.begger@wyo.gov or 307-635-3573.
