The Bonanza Power Plant will be shut down for six weeks starting Monday while the company installs a new steam turbine rotor.
"The good thing about this new rotor is that it will be able to provide more power for about the same energy," said Keith Hill, director of retail marketing for the Deseret Generation & Transmission Cooperative. "It will increase the efficiency of the plant."The Bonanza Power Plant, located in Vernal, primarily serves rural Utah. It is operated by Deseret Generation & Transmission Cooperative, the state's second-largest power producer. Owned by six rural electric cooperatives, the company also serves customers in California, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado and Arizona.
The new turbine rotor weighs 120,506 pounds and was forged in Italy, with final assembly taking place in North Carolina. It took nearly a year to build.
While out of service, Hill said, the 420-megawatt plant will also undergo several other upgrades including a digital control system and new coal pulverizers.
"These upgrades will enhance the reliability of the unit," he said. "Anytime you are able to stop one of these units and take it down to its basic parts for maintenance, it prolongs the life of the plant. And particularly for people in the Uintah basin, we have about 100 jobs out there. Those people want to know that the plant will be operational for a long time. And it will be."
Customers continue to have power while the Bonanza plant is serviced, Hill said.
"They won't notice the difference. Because of the interconnected nature of the power grid, there are other resources that will be filling the need while we are out of service. It is a coordinated outage."