Lakeland Electric faces more than $21 million in emergency repairs to its flagship generator to get it back up and running.
Mike Beckham, LE’s general manager, said the C.D. McIntosh Unit 5, a natural gas-powered, combined-cycle unit capable of producing up to 360 megawatts, unexpectedly tripped offline on Feb. 23. It was a week before the plant’s annual scheduled outage for maintenance.
“When it came off, it made some noise. It did not have any vibrations,” Beckham said. “We heard some rub in there, something just didn’t sound right.”
An extensive inspection of Unit 5, including a borescope inspection to provide a look inside the plant, was completed on March 31. It discovered that a metallic expansion bellows had failed, causing “extensive damage” to the compression section of the combustion turbine that required removing the rotor.
Beckham said Lakeland Electric was forced to enter a short-term power purchase agreement, or PPA, to buy energy to provide power for LE’s customers.
In a memo to City Manager Shawn Sherrouse, Beckham wrote, “pricing from the PPA is never as favorable as the cost of operating [Unit 5] and can be quite high at times when demand comes near supply in Florida, as occurred approximately two weeks ago.”
Beckham said Unit 5’s damaged rotor has been shipped to manufacturer Siemens in Charlotte, North Caroline, which has had staff working on it round the clock.