The Greenland Energy Center is the first new power plant built south and east of the St. Johns River in about 50 years. Bruce Hill, director of operations and maintenance for JEA, sits at one of the computer stations at the plant during the opening ceremony Thursday morning on the Southside. The plant will use natural gas to fuel the two 175-megawatt combustion turbines powering the facility. Before opening the plant, JEA had no generating stations east of the St. Johns River. “We desperately needed to have that reliability here,” said Art Graham, chair of the Florida Public Service Commission and a former City Council member representing the district where the plant is located.