Avista's Biomass-Fired Kettle Falls Power Station Prepares for Summer Outage

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The following is an advisory by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Avista Corporation (NYSE: AVA) (Spokane, Washington), a diversified energy company that has both regulated and non-regulated arms, is preparing for a six-week maintenance outage on their biomass-fired generating plant in Kettle Falls, Washington.

The focus of this outage will be to inspect a 51 mega-watt (MW) General Electric (GE) steam turbine/generator. The turbine is a 17-stage single flow condensing unit that operates at 1,450psig @ 950F. The generator is a 13.8kV, 3,600rpm three phase, hydrogen cooled, synchronous machine that is rated at 53.4kVA with GE solid-state excitation. The boiler, a Combustion Engineering (CE) traveling grate stoker unit, is a Type VU-40, subcritical, natural circulation balanced-draft boiler that is rated at 415,000 lb/hr steam flow at 1500psig and 950F superheat. It will require cleaning and normal repair of the air heater, superheater, economizer, fans, feedwater pumps, steam sootblowers, and the ignition system. Material handling for both the fuel system and the ash removal system will also need inspection and repairs. The electrostatic precipitator will need mechanical and electrical inspection to insure proper ash collection.

"In addition to the Kettle Falls biomass-fired plant, Industrialinfo.com is tracking eight operational power plants for Avista. Avista has five Hydroelectric plants totaling 801 MW, and two natural gas-fired plants totaling 228MW for a total generation of 1080MW," according to Britt Burt, Manager of Power for Industrialinfo.com. Avista Corporation is over 110 years old and has assets in excess of $1.58 billion and services over 603,000 electrical and natural gas customers in the Northwest corner of the United States.