GRDA Marks $525M Gas Unit Completion at Grand River Energy Center
The Grand River Dam Authority will officially dedicate its new $525 million natural gas unit on September 9, 2026, OK Energy Today reports, marking the completion of a project built with Black & Veatch and Mitsubishi Power.
Market Impact
GRDA’s Unit 4 at the Grand River Energy Center in Chouteau, Oklahoma, features a 426-megawatt Mitsubishi Power M501JAC combustion turbine running in simple cycle configuration, the first unit of its kind operating that way in the United States. The hydrogen-capable turbine is built for fast start-up and operational flexibility, aimed at serving GRDA’s customers in the wind-heavy Southwest Power Pool region.
The project traces back to a signing ceremony on October 2, 2023, followed by a groundbreaking on May 16, 2024, and reached commercial operation in 2026. It builds on GRDA’s earlier work with Black & Veatch on Unit 3, a combined-cycle unit completed in 2017 that was recognized as the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. Unit 4 also earned an Award of Merit in the Energy/Industrial category of Engineering News-Record’s 2026 Texas & Louisiana Best Projects Awards for its mechanical work. “Unit 4 represents exactly the kind of investment GRDA is committed to making for our customers,” said Dan Sullivan, GRDA’s president and CEO. Black & Veatch’s Power Providers president, Todd Edsall, said the project reflects the company’s “long-standing work with GRDA” toward “reliable, resilient energy infrastructure for Oklahoma.”
What It Means for Subcontractors
- Commissioning and startup activity around Unit 4 signals near-term demand for mechanical, electrical and instrumentation (E&I) crews supporting commercial operations at the Chouteau, Oklahoma site as GRDA transitions the unit into service.
- Firms with combustion turbine or balance-of-plant maintenance experience should look at long-term O&M subcontracting opportunities tied to the M501JAC unit, since GRDA and Black & Veatch have a multi-year partnership history dating to Unit 3’s 2017 completion.
- Mechanical contractors can point to the project’s ENR Award of Merit for its “Unit 4 Mechanical” scope as a credential benchmark when bidding similar advanced-class gas turbine work in the region.
- Companies specializing in hydrogen-capable or fast-start gas turbine systems may find GRDA a repeat customer, given the utility’s stated commitment to flexible generation assets serving the Southwest Power Pool’s wind-heavy grid.
