Brownsville

Rolling up to the Brownsville plant, the first thing that catches your eye is just how clean, pristine, and impeccably maintained the grounds are. It's a combustion turbine plant, and the facility layout looks spotless from the front entrance.

Access to Brownsville is fairly restricted. Unlike some properties where you can ride around perimeter access roads, Brownsville offers no road behind the plant—you're limited strictly to the front parking lot area. But even from the front gate, I got a fantastic, clear view of the plant units. That's something I won't be able to say for every site on this trip!

Brownsville has one of the most intriguing historical background stories of any asset in our fleet. It's another plant that our organization didn't build originally. We acquire a lot of plants across the region, but the absolute 'gasp factor' at Brownsville comes from who built it originally...Enron. Yes, THAT Enron!

Corporate History: Built during the height of Enron's energy expansion, the facility entered corporate limbo following Enron's infamous financial collapse. The asset eventually moved into Duke Energy's fleet before ultimately being absorbed into our system—where operating a reliable, transparent power plant makes way more sense! After taking in the history and snapping photos at the front entrance, I mounted up for what turned out to be an incredibly beautiful ride heading south toward the next plant down in Mississippi. Winding through rolling hills and sunlit backroads on the bike made all the planning for this trip entirely worth it.

Read more about Brownsville Here, Here, Here and Here!