News

Long wait for cause, cost of power plant explosion

Posted November 14, 2007 10:00 pm

Chris Wetterich

It could be months before the cause and cost of Saturday's explosion and fire at City Water, Light and Power's Dallman Power Station are determined, chief utilities engineer Jay Bartlett said Wednesday.

The same holds true for the amount of insurance money the city will receive, he said.

A $276 million policy on the power plant through AIG runs until July 14, 2009. It requires an annual $795,000 premium, according to documents provided by the city.

There is a list of deductible for various parts of the plant, including $100,000 on the Dallman Power Station and $250,000 on the Westinghouse Steam Turbine Generator Unit, as well as a minimum of $100,000 on transformers.

The insurance will pay regardless of whether human error was involved, Bartlett said. But he cautioned that actual payments are subject to an AIG investigation.

"They'll look at what damaged what first," Bartlett said, adding that a deductible for each item may not have to be paid. "It's kind of a negotiating process. That's what we've been through in the past on smaller losses.

"They've been great in the past about paying, just like we've been great about paying our premium."

A team of CWLP and Springfield Fire Department investigators also is trying to figure out what happened.

"It's obviously extremely important to us that we understand what the failure was," Bartlett said, "because the idea for us is to make sure it never happens again.

"I know what has failed. I don't know why it has failed. I'm very certain we will know."

The utility already knows how lucky it was to avoid human loss in the disaster. A contract employee was standing at a tool trailer no more than 15 feet from the Dallman Unit 1 generator when it exploded, CWLP officials revealed on a tour of the site Wednesday. The employee was uninjured.

During a normal weekday, 139 employees are at the Dallman Power Station, including 14 who would have been in imminent danger because they work in the nearby electrical shop, where a wall collapsed.

"Where they sat is all gone," Bartlett said. "If it had been a weekday, it would have been occupied."

Eleven people were in the building when the explosion happened Saturday at about 6:50 p.m.

In the cavernous room that holds all three Dallman turbines and generators, Dallman 2 and Dallman 3 were untouched. The Dallman 1 generator is a total loss, Bartlett said, but the Dallman 1 turbine "has not been pronounced dead yet."

"The plant is built so that a problem in one part of the plant is not supposed to affect the other," he said. "It didn't."

The generators and turbines take steam produced by the burning of coal and turn it into electricity.

"The coal side of the plant is fine," Barlett said, "except for some piping."

Dallman 3, a coal-fired generator that produces 200 megawatts of electricity, is expected to be back in operation by Monday. Dallman 2, which like Dallman 1 produces 80 megawatts, will be running after Thanksgiving, as soon as maintenance that was already under way is complete, Bartlett said.

And Lake Springfield should be open to boaters in a week. The lake has been closed while environmental contractors clean up an oil spill from the explosion and firefighting effort.

At Dallman, the first priorities are to stabilize the brick building, remove the small amount of remaining asbestos and seal the structure from the cold and other elements so that pipes do not freeze this winter, Bartlett said. That will be done using corrugated metal and fiberglass insulation.

The north wall will have to be replaced, said CWLP general manager Todd Renfrow.

A transformer outside the building next to Dallman 1 was badly charred, and gaping sections of the walls surrounding the room holding the generators and turbines were blown out in the initial blast, as was every window in the room. Metal fragments were sent through the roof.

CWLP found a piece of the generator that exploded about 1,000 feet away on a boat dock, Bartlett noted.

Asbestos from insulation surrounding pipes and a tank that came loose has been contained, and workers are no longer required to wear respirators.

The plant's engineering library, which contains about 70,000 documents, including the plans for the Dallman Power Station, was unharmed. Firefighters also protected a control room and computers a floor below the generators and turbines.

"I can't say enough about them," Bartlett said. "It was really impressive."

Chris Wetterich can be reached at 788-1523 or chris.wetterich@sj-r.com.

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