Springerville Unit 3 boiler to be fired up in February

As construction reached the 27th month in December on the 400-megawatt Springerville Generating Station’s Unit 3, crews burned the midnight oil putting in a lot of extended hours to keep the project on schedule and meet the early completion timetable of July 2006.

The focus of much of the activity has now been redirected to the start up stages, as well as installing siding, roofing, insulation and weather enclosures.

Prior to start up, Tri-State’s on-site personnel conduct “walk downs” of various systems to ensure that all of the necessary work on each component of the unit has been completed.

“So far, we have 103 systems that have been turned over from the construction phase to the start-up team, and 32 systems have successfully achieved start-up testing and are now in the hands of Tri-State,” Lillian Stan, Tri-State’s generation engineering project coordinator at Springerville explained.

The long-awaited “first fire” to the boiler is scheduled for Feb. 14. “This will determine the integrity of the boiler’s air/gas path, as well as boiler tightness,” Stan said.

When Unit 3 begins operations this summer, Tri-State will receive the full output of the 400-megawatt net capacity. Beginning in 2007, 100 megawatts of this unit will be sold to Tucson Electric Power for up to five years and 100 megawatts of generation will go to Salt River Project under a 30-year contract.