Tuesday, January 9, 2001 MD - Computer card failure shuts down power plant

From Staff Reports

CUMBERLAND -- The AES Warrior Run co-generation plant at Mexico Farms came back on line at 4 p.m. Monday following a computer card failure Sunday night, according to the plant manager.

This was the second time in about two months that the plant went off line, according to Pete Convery. "Monday we had to get a new computer card and install it and once we did that we came back online."

There was no explosion Sunday in the 9:10 p.m. incident, which caused noise intermittently for about a half-hour or more.

"We apologize for the inconvenience and we plan on solving it. This is the second time this has happened and it doesn't satisfy us. We would like to not be a disturbance at all," said Convery.

AES Warrior Run has spent $200,000 for noise reduction in the last year. "We have more work to do -- two more small lines that we need to silence. We'll be spending some money," said Convery.

Convery said the noise that prompted calls to state police by startled neighbors "comes from venting steam as a safety procedure in the plant."

On Nov. 1, the AES plant went temporarily off line when valve safeties popped to vent steam.

The $400-million, 180-megawatt, coal-fired, electric-generating facility went on line a year ago and began commercial operations in February. The plant uses 600,000 to 650,000 tons of coal per year, 150,000 tons of limestone annually as part of its clean-coal technology and approximately 3 million gallons of water daily.

http://www.times-news.com/stories/2001/january/796664.html

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), January 09, 2001

Answers

Three million gallons of water daily? In the long run nuclear would be cheaper.

-- Uncle Fred (dogboy45@bigfoot.com), January 09, 2001.