Mighty River Power Plots Maintenance Plan for Southdown Power Station in New Zealand

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources Australia (Perth, Australia)--Mighty River Power Limited (ASX:MYT) (Auckland, New Zealand), which owns and operates the 175-megawatt (MW) Southdown Power Station, recently announced dates for the annual maintenance work for the entire plant. The outage work will be in October and November 2013.

The power plant has two identical GE Combustion Turbines that produce 45 MW each, which are attached to two Innovative Steam Technologies OTSG (once-through steam generators) heat recovery steam generators (HRSG) and one 45-MW, standalone GE gas turbine. The power plant also features a 35-MW Alstom Steam Turbine that has a total capacity of 175 MW.

The Southdown Power Station is a natural gas-fired, combined-cycle gas turbine cogeneration power station that supplies electricity to the wider Auckland area and steam for use by local industries surrounding the power plant. The power plant is in Southdown, a suburb in southern Auckland City, and was built by the Southdown Cogeneration Joint Venture, which is between TransAlta New Zealand Limited (Lower Hutt, New Zealand) and Mercury Energy (Auckland, New Zealand).

The plant was commissioned in 1996 and initially was equipped with only two LM6000 gas turbines and one steam turbine to produce 114 MW. Mighty River Power bought a 50% ownership in the power plant in 2000 and bought the remaining 50% by 2002. The third LM6000 gas turbine was installed by Mighty River in 2007, which increased the overall plant capacity from 114 to 175 MW.

During the eight-day outage, Mighty River Power will perform inspections on the turbines and the HRSG's, including all the minor equipment attached to the unit. This type of work is performed every year at the plant. According to plant officials, the next inspection on the entire plant is scheduled for the third quarter of 2014. Very minor outages are conducted every two months on gas turbines and last for more than 24 hours.

The company owns and operates several hydro power stations on the Waikato River, as well as geothermal plants in the Taupo area. Mighty River Power is currently finishing construction on the 82-MW Ngatamariki Geothermal Plant in Taupo, and is working on two more geothermal projects, which are in very early feasibility stages.

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