According to the peak season generation reliability results, 2016 has been another stellar year for Mississippi Power employees at the company’s power plants.
EFOR, or equivalent forced outage rate, is a measure of the availability of generation units to meet customer needs.
The company’s peak season EFOR – calculated during January, February, June, July and August – was 0.78 percent. The lesser the amount of time that units are on an outage means the more generation is available to meet customer needs.
“Results like these prove the commitment of our Generation employees to deliver world-class value to our customers every day,” Vice President of Generation and Senior Production Officer Allen Reaves said. “Their top priority is to safely provide service to our customers when they need us most.”
The combined cycle at the Kemper County energy facility, fueled by natural gas, surpassed two years of operation in mid-August. Since starting up in Aug. 2014, the unit has generated nearly 7.5 billion kilowatt hours, enough electricity to power the energy needs of 270,000 homes.
“The operations team at Kemper is safely producing electricity for our customers while, at the same time, the plant and startup team is working toward completion of the gasifier and gas cleanup portions of the facility,” Reaves said. “The combined cycle has provided tremendous value to Mississippi Power customers.
Plant Watson Manager Kathy Russell credits her team for managing several challenges throughout peak season.
“The combustion turbine had a record number of starts this year, which means there were more opportunities for equipment failure and reliability challenges,” Russell said. “We’ve successfully planned, managed and executed maintenance outages to position our units for success during peak season.”
Plant Daniel employees executed two outages on the facility’s combined cycle units over the past year. The plant’s two coal units also took advantage of reserve shutdown time to prepare for the summer peak season while applying lessons learned from the recently completed scrubber project.
“The Plant Daniel family is committed to providing continuous safe and reliable operation of our units all year long,” said Plant Daniel Manager Nik Budney. “Our peak season performance didn’t happen just from a few months of focus. This performance level is the result of our team’s drive to meet everyday challenges and strategic planning to diagnose and treat potential problems before they cause significant concern.”
Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), produces safe, reliable and environmentally responsible energy for more than 186,000 customers in 23 southeast Mississippi counties. Mississippi Power earned the 2015 ReliabilityOneTM Award for outstanding midsize utility for excellence in storm restoration and recovery efforts as well as being a leader in reliability, customer service and safety. Visit our websites at www.mississippipower.com and www.mississippipowernews.com, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.