Springerville Recognized as PRBCUG Plant of the Year

During the Powder River Basin Coal Users’ Group (PRBCUG) annual conference held Mar. 31–Apr. 3, 2014, in conjunction with the ELECTRIC POWER Conference & Exhibition, Springerville Generating Station was recognized as the PRBCUG Plant of the Year.

The 1,600-MW Springerville facility includes four units of roughly equal size. Units 1 and 2 are owned by Tucson Electric Power (TEP) and were built in the mid-1980s. Unit 3—completed in 2006—is owned by Tri-State Generation and Transmission. The Salt River Project owns Unit 4, which entered service in 2009. All of the units are operated by TEP.

Tracy Ortiz, fuel superintendent for Springerville, gave a presentation during the conference highlighting some improvements that the site has made recently. She noted that the plant has implemented annual outages for its railcar dumper system.

“We’ve been able to reduce our downtime, our demurrage charges, and everything else,” Ortiz said. “We don’t really have a lot of downtime because of mechanical or electrical issues.”

Guarding has been improved throughout the site as well. Ortiz said that the company has been spending $50,000 to $100,000 per year to install upgrades in many areas, including around head and tail pulleys.

The company has upgraded doors to keep the cold out and installed portable heaters in some areas. Although the plant is in Arizona, the site faces cold weather issues due to being located 7,000 feet above sea level.

TEP places a lot of emphasis on housekeeping. “We have about eight to 10 people on any given day in our coal yard cleaning the buildings,” Ortiz said. Recently, management began assigning cleaning personnel to two-month rotations in the various areas to improve accountability. Ortiz said, “It’s making all the difference in the world.”

The company has also invested heavily—about $1 million—in a wireless vibration monitoring system in an effort to minimize catastrophic equipment failures. Safety equipment has also been upgraded.

The site will host an open house on June 11–12, 2014, to showcase many of the improvements (call 713-343-1879 for more details) and look for more coverage of the Springerville facility in the July issue of POWER.

—Aaron Larson, associate editor (@AaronL_Power, @POWERmagazine)