The Marquette Energy Center consists of three 18-megawatt reciprocating internal combustion engines that are dual fueled by natural gas and fuel oil. Shortly after operations began in August, more than a dozen Marquette township residents complained about noises coming from the MEC, which is located along Wright Street. (Journal file photo)

MARQUETTE — Members of the Marquette Board of Light and Power and Wartsila, a Finnish corporation that manufactures and services power sources and other equipment in the marine and energy markets, continue to work toward a solution in regards to the noise emanating from operations at the Marquette Energy Center.

The MEC, which opened in August, consists of three 18-megawatt reciprocating internal combustion engines that are dual fueled by natural gas and fuel oil. Shortly after operations began, more than a dozen Marquette township residents have submitted written complaints pertaining to the noise.

Wartsila, who currently has a team in Italy and Finland working together to figure out a solution, recently updated the BLP with its progress, said Tom Carpenter, executive director of the BLP, at the BLP’s regular meeting Tuesday evening.

“Everybody knows that we have some neighbors … who are not happy with some of the noise coming from the MEC,” Carpenter said. “We had Wartsila here in December (to evaluate the situation) and we finally got some information back. They are actually working on a device that they can locate inside of the plant itself to absorb that full frequency pulse that people are hearing.”

Carpenter explained that since Wartsila has to physically build the device, mount it and test it, that’s where some of the delays are coming from.

“The first prototype failed so they had a rerun at it,” he said. “We’re hoping that within a few weeks we’ll have that second prototype test and then they should be able to tell us how it will positively affect, hopefully, our plant.”

On top of that, Carpenter said, the BLP was contacted by Shiner & Associates, a Chicago-based acoustical engineer company, that said they’re willing to do a test to make sure the BLP’s initial installments and silencers are working properly.

“Shiner & Associates company told us zero to 5 decibel is noticeable but not a nuisance,” Carpenter said. “They did a modeling of what the engines and engine hall should sound like and determined we might be at the higher end of the zero-to-five range so we are sort of approaching a possible nuisance. We’re going to have them, hopefully, in a few weeks here (for) a follow up study.”

BLP chairman Tom Tourville asked if the board could expect to take any action regarding the matter at its next meeting in June. Carpenter said he hopes so and that he’s remaining optimistic about the matter.

Since the MEC is close to residential properties, Tourville said the BLP needs to uphold their promise and make sure they’re good neighbors.

“When we first looked at this during the preliminary phase of the project we hit those decibal sound numbers, so we as a board and a staff decided we wanted to go a step further and there was three or four additional things that weren’t in the original budget here that we approved to do,” Tourville said. “They were roughly $212,000 additional beyond the original budgeting but we wanted to do it because we’re in the neighborhood and we want to be good neighbors too.”

Even though the MEC has been generating power for Marquette and all or parts of nine townships in Marquette County since late August, it has shared duties with the aging coal-fired Shiras Steam Plant, which is expected to cease operations in late June or early July.

In a recent Journal article, Carpenter said that when the MEC becomes the primary source of power the engines will run more than they have through the fall and winter months.