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| Friends of Coal - Kentucky posted Good news: A key coal unit is staying open to ensure reliable power. The market is waking up to what we’ve always known – you need coal’s steady, dispatchable energy for a stable grid. |
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| gem "Xcel's 'poor operating practices' led to unit shutdowns on over 700 days since 2010." Xcel first screwed ratepayers by charging them for the new plant while it was under construction. Normally, the ratepayers are not charged until a new plant is operational. And it continues to screw them because Unit 3 has been offline a lot due to mechanical problems. |
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| Street View, Aug 2021 |
Unit 3 is demonstrating that newer and bigger is not necessarily better.
In addition to problems such as bad welds in the boiler, noise issues and the need to replace the finishing superheater, it was taken offline in January 2020 to repair and replace steam turbine blades. "Then, at the completion of the 2020 outage, a loss of lubrication to the main turbine shaft while in the process of returning the unit to service resulted in still more damage to the turbine, generator and ancillary equipment. That outage extended after the end of 2020." And they lost half of 2022 because on Jan 28, 2022, they did work on the generator while a breaker that isolates the generator from the grid was still closed. "As a result, the generator was significantly damaged, several generating units in the region experienced momentary outages and multiple transmission lines were opened.” The supercritical steam turbine was manufactured by Mitsubishi. [power-eng]
I don't know who made the boiler. Some of the problems are obviously operational issues. I'm not experienced enough to determine if some of the problems were because of faulty manufacturing.
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| eenews At best, Unit 3 is going to lose about 360 more days of service because of "elevated vibrations" in the turbine in Aug 2025. |
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