Calpine’s Summas Cogen Economic Shut Down Extended Until August

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). A Calpine Corporation (NYSE:CAL) (San Jose, California) cogeneration facility located outside of Sumas, Washington in Whatcom County, has extended an outage, which has been ongoing for six months, and has been extended until at least August 2006.

On February 3, 2006, Calpine officials at the Sumas cogeneration facility took the 120 MW natural gas fired plant offline. Officials stated that current natural gas prices contributed to this decision. Calpine has a long term purchase contract for natural gas. The company decided it would be more beneficial to place the plant in an economic shut down, and sell its natural gas reserve for a six month period ending in June 2006. During this time a combustion inspection and valve work was conducted on the units.

Earlier this month officials reevaluated the forecast, and due to the surplus of hydroelectric capacity in the area, decided it would be more profitable to extend the economic shut down an additional 90 days. Plant maintenance officials have stated they will use this period of time to do additional preventive maintenance to the units.

Officials stated that this economic shut down would in no way effect plans to conduct a series of turbine outages over the next five years. This will consist of replacement of a number 3 bucket during a Hot Gas Inspection in 2008. Plans for a major overhaul on the combined-cycle plant are still scheduled for sometime in 2011.

Sumas cogeneration facility is a base load, 120 MW natural gas fired facility that usually operates on average 8,600 hrs per year. The combined-cycle facility consists of an 87 MW GE 70001EA SI gas turbine with HRSG, and a 37 MW GE SC 3 Steam turbine, which came online in 1993.

Industrial info tracks planned and unplanned maintenance outages as part of its Unit Outage Tracking Database. Contact Industrial Info’s Member Center at 1-800-762-3361 for details.

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