Coming on the heels of four gas turbine-generators, the construction of the Platte River Power Authority’s fifth unit at Rawhide Energy Station should have been a walk in the park. It was more like Jurassic Park, with the dinosaurs played by major equipment vendors who lost their watches. The vendor foul-ups and substandard stainless-steel pipe from China that had to be replaced made an already tight schedule even tighter.

Platte River Power Authority Weekend work by contractor saved the owner demurrage costs.

The kicker, though, was a massive tornado that ripped across miles of the Fort Collins, Colo.-based utility’s 115-kV and 230-kV transmission lines and felled 14 towers one day before power was scheduled to flow.

With performance testing completed and now being evaluated, Platte River Power Authority (PRPA) Senior Project Engineer Bill Emslie has a moment to reflect on the accomplishments and lessons learned from construction of the 128-MW unit—and also how the tornado nearly took his life.

Initial Advantage

When the $50-million project got under way last September, Emslie was sure he had a leg up on the nine-month schedule. That’s because, after talking with other utilities, he learned a gas turbine-generator could be procured earlier than expected. “We purchased someone else’s slot in the General Electric manufacturing line,” says Emslie. “That gained us six months.”

Howard B. Stussman / ENR Construction of PRPA’s final Rawhide unit, at far right, was a white-knuckle ride through globalization’s wilds.

For PRPA, it was an important six-month cushion since a neighboring utility was paying PRPA $20 million to supply power from the fifth unit on May 23, says General Manager Brian Moeck.

The first problems surfaced in late January, a few months after the start of construction, recalls Emslie. That was when he called to check on the status of the order for the carbon-dioxide purge system. The GE generator is cooled by hydrogen. If there is an emergency shutdown or a routine shutdown for maintenance on the generator, the hydrogen is purged by the CO2 purge system. “I was verbally told the system would be shipped at the end of January. When it did not ship, I called the supplier and was told delivery would be at the end of February,” Emslie says.

In late January, PRPA caught a break when GE, realizing PRPA was in a bind, worked with the railroad to get the turbine, manufactured in Greenville, S.C., and the generator, made in Schenectady, N.Y., on the same train and headed in the same direction.

On a Friday afternoon, Emslie got word that his $24-million turbine and generator would be arriving on Sunday. Crews from Steamboat Springs, Colo.-based The Industrial Co. Inc. (TIC) had a gantry crane set up and ready so that on Monday workers could lift the equipment in place. “Zero demurrage from the railroad,” he proudly recalls.

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Despite repeated follow-up calls, Emslie was still waiting for the CO2 purge system at the end of February. A March 6 e-mail informed him that the unit would not ship for at least six more weeks. He immediately got on the phone and called the president of the supplier to have him confirm the mid-April delivery date. “When the unit did not ship in mid-April, I followed up with calls and e-mails and was informed delivery would be early May,” he says.

Early May came and still no shipment. Again, Emslie phoned and e-mailed, and was told, the unit would ship mid-May. He declines to name the purge-system vendor.
Miffed and alarmed, Emslie gave up on a predictable delivery date and leased a temporary CO2 purge system. He had to have a purge system in place by mid-May so he could begin preliminary testing and startup. That was now less than two weeks from when PRPA was contractually committed to deliver power to the other utility. The original unit finally shipped the week of May 19.

Xcel Energy Inc PRPA lost 14 transmission towers to a tornado on May 23.

About a month later, amidst concrete pours, steel erection and electrical work by general contractor TIC, Emslie and crew, who procured major equipment themselves, learned about the dark side of globalization.

Gas-turbine supervisor Guy Williams and plant electrical engineer Roland Thiel found they couldn’t weld three critical 4-in.- and 5-in.-dia stainless-steel “Ts.” It turned out that the stainless-steel pipe came from China and the “high copper content messed up the weldability,” says Williams. They did locate U.S.-made substitute “Ts” that “welded as smooth as butter,” says Emslie, who adds, “This was an expensive, time-consuming lesson.” Emslie was now uneasily watching the project’s “float” dwindle.

Globalization lesson two involved the unit’s low-voltage switchgear. It had been ordered from a U.S.-based company, which Emslie also declines to name, but was manufactured in Mexico. Someone must have looked at the drawings in a mirror, says Thiel, because almost everything was wired “backward.” PRPA electricians fixed it, but work was now on a 16-hour-day, seven-day-a-week pace, says Emslie.

While the pace was still hectic, all signs pointed to commercial operation on May 23. On May 22, a tornado struck. If it hadn’t been for the tornado, says Emslie, “We would have completed the job three days early.” That said, right now most everyone marks the job down as completed on time.

Lessons

Among the lessons Emslie and crew learned is to have one person dedicated only to procurement. Because PRPA is a small power utility, that’s not easy, but the amount of paperwork makes it “absolutely necessary,” says Emslie. Another necessity, an even taller order, is to have someone eyeball critical equipment to make sure it is actually being built and built correctly and in the right place in the production pipeline, suggests Emslie. As for procuring equipment or materials from overseas, Emslie cautions that in many cases “you can’t go back to the source” if there’s a problem. And even if you could, you have a language barrier to overcome.