Mirant’s Morgantown Station Offline Due To Forced Outage

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Mirant Corporation’s (NYSE:MIR) Morgantown Generating Station was forced offline Wednesday morning, March 21, 2007, due to an unplanned outage on one of its coal-fired units. The station’s 626-megawatt unit 01 tripped offline due to a malfunction in the boiler feed pump. The issue should be resolved and the unit back up and operating within 72 hours. The purpose of the boiler feed pump is to efficiently pump water into the boiler. This component is normally wired to the boiler control circuit allowing the pump to maintain proper water levels in the boiler. Typical repair times for a failed pump range from 2-4 days.

The Morgantown power plant is situated on the Potomac River in Newburg, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC. The station utilizes cooling water from the Potomac River for major components and plant equipment. The plant consists of two coal/oil-fired 626 MW units along with six smaller combustion turbine units totaling a maximum generating capacity of 1,492 megawatts. This amount of electricity is enough to power almost 1.5 million homes. The station is minimizing environmental impact by equipping boilers with low-Nox burners (separated over-fire air technology). It also voluntarily installed electrostatic precipitators, which eliminate fly ash with a 99.5% reduction rate. To help protect the Potomac River from contamination, the station treats run off wastewater that is returned to the river.

Mirant Corporation headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia owns the Morgantown station. The company is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MIR. The company has a power generation fleet of 24 power plants located in high population areas in the United States. The business also generates power in the Philippines, Curacao, and Trinadad. Mirant is a competitive energy company that produces and sells electricity in the United States, the Caribbean, and the Philippines. Mirant emerged from bankruptcy last year and posted a strong 2006 net income of $1.86 billion versus a net loss of $1.3 billion for 2005.

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