Emergency generating plant earns its keep early
MAPLE GROVE, MINN. – Feb. 27, 2009 – A new emergency generating plant in the Arrowhead region of Minnesota was called upon Tuesday, Feb. 24 to provide electricity to cooperative customers during an outage, even though final testing on the facility is not quite complete.
The Arrowhead Standby Generating Plant is an 18-megawatt, diesel-powered facility built by wholesale power provider Great River Energy, Maple Grove, Minn., and one of Great River Energy’s 28 member cooperatives, Arrowhead Electric Cooperative, Lutsen, Minn. Work on the facility is expected to be officially complete this spring but the plant is already operational. It is located near the Arrowhead Electric Cooperative substation at Colvill, Minn., approximately 10 miles east of Grand Marais.
During a short test of the facility Tuesday night, a conductor on the power line from the Maple Hill substation to the Colvill substation failed and created what would have resulted in a significant power outage had Great River Energy not been able to start the plant to provide backup power.
“It’s already doing its job for our members,” said Mike Muellenbach, Great River Energy project manager. “It generated about 2 megawatts of power Tuesday night for over 800 customers. We will be able to get power online faster next time, but it kept the lights on for a lot of people.”
Because Colvill is at the end of the area’s only existing transmission line, when a storm or other event damages that line, electric service for the entire region is interrupted until the line is repaired. The new facility will help ensure the power stays on at as many homes as possible and minimizes the impact of a transmission outage.
“We are really happy to have this backup power supply,” said Don Stead, manager at Arrowhead Electric Cooperative. “We appreciate the reliability it will give our member-customers.”
The Arrowhead Standby Generating Plant is expected to run approximately 10 to 20 hours a year, depending on the number of storms or other events that may cause an outage in the transmission system. Despite the few hours it will run, it was a more cost-effective, less intrusive way of improving electric reliability in the area than the alternative, which was building a second transmission line running parallel to the existing line.
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