Scheduled outage means continued reliability at Laramie River Station

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Laramie River Station in Wheatland, Wyoming.

Everyone wants reliability when it comes to the power they receive, and for Basin Electric there’s nothing more important than providing dependable electricity for its members.

Levi Mickelsen, plant manager at Laramie River Station in Wheatland, Wyoming, says, “When anything is unreliable, it adds cost and disruption. When a unit is offline for an unscheduled outage, we have to replace the power not being generated by our units from somebody else. If the load demand is high and the supply is short, this causes huge increases in the real-time price of power.”

Basin Electric coordinates all outages to make sure there’s no disruption in power. In the spring of 2022, Laramie River scheduled an outage to complete routine maintenance and to replace the boiler reheat outlet panels in Unit 2. This marked the second time in 20 years that the panels were replaced. The reheater plays an important part in the function of a boiler; it reheats steam after it has passed through the high pressure section of the turbine and increases the efficiency of the unit. Reheating the steam also reduces the risk of water droplet impingement and damage to the turbine blades.

Unit 1 is scheduled for a reheat panel replacement in the fall of 2023. At that point, all units at Laramie River will have had the reheat outlet panels replaced, ensuring continued reliability to members.

To find out more about the outage and Basin Electric’s commitment to reliability, read Regular maintenance means improved reliability at Laramie River Station in the Fall 2022 issue of Basin Today.

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