Yallourn to Return to Full Plant Operations After Major Shutdowns Caused by Severe Floods

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Perth, Australia)--The Yallourn Power Station, which was badly affected by floods in June, is getting ready to operate at full capacity by Monday, Aug. 6, 2012. Yallourn, which has a maximum operating capacity of 1480 megawatts (MW), is the third-largest power station in Victoria, supplying one-fourth of its power needs.

TRUenergy Pty Limited (Melbourne, Australia) built Yallourn Power Station in 1973, in the town of Yallourn in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, close to the Morwell River. Earlier this June, heavy floods collapsed the Morwell River diversion, sending water flooding into the Yallourn plant. This severely damaged the main conveyor system and hampered the electricity generation from the plant to almost one-fourth of usual electricity generation. "After about 60 days of shutdown and continuous outages, Yallourn is now getting ready to operate fully," Michael Hutchinson (TRUenergy spokesperson) said recently.

Yallourn has four Toshiba Condensing Reheat steam turbines. Each turbine has a designand operating capacity of 375 MW. Three of the main four units have been down since last June. Unit 2 and 3 were recovered during the last week of July 2012. Unit 4 is expected to be recovered on Aug 6, 2012. Yallourn hopes to generate electricity back at its original 1,480-MW capacity.

"The recent reinstatement of a conveyor has allowed the power station's generation capacity to be increased, with a third unit brought online last week and coal stocks almost full," the company said in a statement.

TRUenergy scheduled a $600,000 major 30-day maintenance outage on Unit 1 in April and May of next year. 30 days of the outage on this 350-MW unit will include inspections and repairs on the Alstom turbine and the boiler. It also will include routine and overhaul inspections on the whole unit.

In addition, TRUenergy has planned for a $1 billion expansion project at the existing 1,480 MW-plant. The company wants to further capacity by 1,000 MW. Planning and initial design phase on this project was completed during 2011. The project will be built in two phases using two 500-MW, F-Class, combined-cycle gas turbines. Following the funding approvals expected in February next year, TRUenergy, along with Consultant Sinclair Knight Merz (Sydney, Australia), will raise tenders and requests for quotations from suppliers to select the engineering, planning and construction contractor by October 2013. With all approvals and funding requirements in place, Yallourn has plans to begin 30 months of civil and site construction on the expansion power plant by April 2014. Commercial operation of the plant is expected in October 2016.

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