Fall 2024 U.S. Power Plant Maintenance and Refueling Outlook

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The 2024 fall season of maintenance in the U.S. power markets has begun. Power plant operators across the U.S. will tally up 330 gigawatts (GW) of maintenance over the course of this shoulder season, heading into the winter months. Much of the work is related to natural gas-fired facilities that take units offline for short tests or minor scheduled maintenance throughout the year.

With 28.5 GW of nuclear power entering a refueling cycle, the RFC region will see three potentially overlapping outages at Point Beach (600 MW), and Braidwood (1,166 MW) and Dresden (1009 MW) in October after Byron (1,164 MW) comes back online at the end of September. Across all markets, Constellation Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:CEG) (Baltimore, Maryland) will put seven nuclear units through refueling this fall.

Across the U.S., 65 coal units are scheduled for shoulder season maintenance, planning an average of 30 days offline and representing a total of 28.8 GW.

Perhaps of greatest interest, the 1,300-MW, coal-fired Mountaineer Power Station Unit 1 in PJM's American Electric Power Company Incorporated (NASDAQ:AEP) (AEP) (Columbus, Ohio) West Virginia region entered an extended maintenance cycle beginning September 6, which is expected to last 100 days. This is a major rebuild of the plant's boiler tubes and will see the superheat section replaced.

In SPP, Kansas City Power & Light Company's (KCPL) (Evergy Incorporated) coal-fired, 893-MW La Cygne Unit 1 will be out of service starting September 14 for 90 days. The unit will undergo a major overhaul, including turbines, boilers and lube oil system. This unit is an intermediate load plant in the region that provides stability and flexibility for the wind farms in the area.

In year two of its seasonal operating mode, Arizona Public Service (APS) will take its Four Corners coal-fired, 818-MW Unit 5 offline for maintenance between October 15 and December 15. This coincides with a routine maintenance period for Luna's CT/HRSG units 1 and 2 for an additional 350 MW of baseload power offline in New Mexico during this shoulder season.

CPS Energy's JK Spruce 922-MW Unit 2 in San Antonio, Texas, will be offline starting October 13 for approximately 50 days for a major turbine overhaul and regular maintenance. This outage will overlap with the nuclear refueling outages of South Texas and Comanche Peak in that region.

Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Power Plant Database can click here for the plant profiles of the facilities mentioned in this article.

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