Diageo is building a power plant at the Distillery on St. Croix. It feels that it can no longer rely on the V.I. Power and Water Authority to supply necessary power for the distillery. The plan is to generate all needed power on site to run their operation. It will be a liquid propane gas fueled power plant to generate both electricity and steam to run the operations. There are warehouses in Estate Diamond, several miles away that will continue to run on WAPA power for the near foreseeable future.
This move was to been in the works for about 11 months, and is intended reduce costs and insure that they will have enough power to run the operation. The heat recovery will be used with the addition of a small amount of propane fire to generate steam. They have purchased a 4 megawatt steam turbine generator with heat recovery in order to generate their own electricity. The will have two 75,000 gallon propane tanks to provide the fuel.The move was necessary to ensure that the continuous operation of the distillery would be ensured. There was no mention of the amounts of money that Diageo was spending with WAPA or the cost of building the generating plant. This is however a very significant investment in the distillery. The plant is very green and will help meet the environmental goal of Diageo for the St. Croix plant.
