Contact Energy to Start Electrical Refurbishments at Roxburgh Hydro Facility

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Perth, Australia)--Contact Energy Limited (Wellington, New Zealand) is pushing to conduct a 52-day outage on Unit 3 at the Roxburgh Hydro plant. The company is planning to replace the existing 110-kilowatt (kV) transformers on units 3 and 1 with high-voltage transformers during 2013 and 2014, respectively.

Contact Energy is a renowned energy provider that supplies electricity, natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to about 560,000 customers in New Zealand.

Contact Energy commissioned the 40-megawatt (MW) Roxburgh Hydro power plant, on the Clutha River in Central Otago, New Zealand, in 1956. The power plant features eight units developed with Francis hydraulic turbines, which generate about 40 MW of electricity each. With all eight units in operation, the power station currently generates 320 MW of renewable energy, producing enough electricity to power about 200,000 homes.

The company has launched proposals to replace the transformers at units 1 and 3 in 2011. Contact Energy received the funding approvals recently in June 2012. With all the approvals, Contact Energy can select the required contractors and suppliers for the electrical refurbishment project. Following this, the company expects to commence the outage on Unit 3. According to plans, Unit 3 will undergo a 52-day outage, which is scheduled to begin in February 2013.

Contact Energy will conduct a similar outage on Unit 1 at Roxburgh. Both outages will focus on transformer replacements, along with minor repairs on the turbines. Unit 1 will undergo a four-week maintenance outage in 2014. The total cost for the outages for units 3 and 1 is estimated to be $4 million.

Unit 7 completed a major strip-down and mid-life refurbishment in August 2008, which lasted about eight months. The refurbishment involved rebuilding the generator stator with a new core and copper windings. "The Roxburgh generators are now more than 50 years old and, therefore, require a makeover to ensure they are running at their best," said Colin McDonald, an electrical engineer for Contact Energy.

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