Calpine California Pastoria plant curtailed

LOS ANGELES, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Calpine Corp's CPNLQ.PK 724-megawatt Pastoria natural gas-fired power station in California curtailed power output for unplanned and planned maintenance Monday evening or sometime Tuesday, according to a Tuesday report by the California Independent System Operator.

Plant output was limited to about 600 MW, the Cal ISO said.

In a separate outage last week, the station had shut for about a day for both planned and unplanned work.

The Pastoria combined cycle plant is located in Lebec in Kern County about 30 miles south of Bakersfield, California, on property leased from Tejon Ranch Corp.

There are three 156-MW combustion turbines at the station and two heat recovery steam turbines rated at 169 MW and 87 MW.

Calpine also plans to add a 160 MW simple-cycle, gas-fired combustion turbine at Pastoria at a cost of between $100 million and $200 million. It will likely enter service in 2011.

One MW powers about 700 homes in California.

Calpine, of San Jose, California, owns and operates nearly 24,000 MW of generating capacity in operation and under construction and markets energy commodities in North America. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Gary Hill)