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Repairs nearing completion for Unit 3 at Boundary Dam

The repairs for Unit 3 at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Power Station are nearing completion.
Boundary Dam pic

The repairs for Unit 3 at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Power Station are nearing completion.

Jonathan Tremblay, the senior consultant for media relations and issues management at SaskPower, said Unit 3 needed precise repair for unique pieces, so it took longer than a simple tune-up.

“We had to dismantle the turbine and send very large pieces to speciality labs in Canada and the U.S., so all of that has gone relatively well, and we’re just receiving those pieces back now, and are reassembling the turbine,” said Tremblay.

Some of those pieces could be sent to Saskatoon, but others had to go to locations such as Savannah, Ga.

All of the pieces have now arrived, or are about to reach the plant.

“So it’s a question of, to the millimetre, putting it back together,” said Tremblay.

Tremblay hopes Unit 3 can be powered up this week, and then the CCS facility will be brought online, and will start capturing carbon again a few days later.

He noted that Unit 3’s turbine spins at very high speeds, so SaskPower needs to make sure the vibrations work, and the turbine won’t tear itself apart.

Unit 3 has been offline since a severe thunderstorm rumbled through the Estevan area on June 14. When Unit 3 is offline, the carbon capture and storage facility at Boundary Dam is also offline.

Units 4, 5 and 6 were also knocked offline temporarily due to the storm, but the damage to those units was not as severe, and they were back up and running within days.

Tremblay called the damage to the other three units as largely cosmetic, but the damage for Unit 3 was on a much larger scale.

“There was no real reason, unfortunately, that the damage was worse on that one unit,” said Tremblay.

Unit 3 has been offline for so long because of the precise technology inside. The turbine at Unit 3 is different than the other units.

But he stressed the uniqueness of Unit 3 didn’t make it more susceptible to damage from the storm. And each unit has very minute differences that need to be taken into account.

“They’re also tuned to the type of coal we burn in Estevan, so it’s not something we can send anywhere. There are just a few labs that can do the repairs in North America.”

It’s unfortunate that it was Unit 3 that went down for nearly three months, he said, because of the connection to the CCS unit.

While Unit 3 has been offline, SaskPower has been able to complete some maintenance work on the carbon capture unit. The Crown corporation had planned to do some maintenance and cleaning at the carbon capture unit during the fall months, but that work has been completed now that it is idle.

“That means we won’t have to do that routine maintenance in the fall, and we should be able to run the CCS process all the way to the new year,” said Tremblay.