By Steve Blankinship, Associate Editor

Commuting to work by boat and piling up coal to block floodwaters is far from routine for power plant personnel.

But during last year’s Iowa floods, the Mississippi Rive rose to historic levels, causing personnel at Alliant Energy’s 40-year-old, 212 MW Burlington Plant to help build an 1,800-foot-long wall around the plant and a 12-foot-high wall of coal to protect structures and redirect floodwaters. At the height of the flood all that was visible from the air was the coal pile, some conveyor structures and the plant itself surrounded by the barrier and lots of water.

Flood control efforts allowed Burlington to stay on line throughout the flood. At one point, employees had to be shuttled to and from the plant by boat. The river rose to within inches of forcing a shutdown. Plant personnel had to sandbag quickly to protect switchgear and vital components. “We stayed down at about 100 MW the whole time to allow time to cool down in case we had to shut down,” says Plant Manager Buddy Hasten. “There were a lot of tired people but they were pretty proud too.”

Burlington Plant, on the banks of the Mississippi River near Burlington, Iowa, is a single coal-fired unit that went into service in 1968 and produces 212 MW. The plant also operates eight 17 MW gas turbines—four at the plant and four more in town. The units are summer peakers, also relied on for regional black start capacity, voltage and load support.

Alliant’s systemwide fuel mix is 54 percent coal, 25 percent purchased power and 3 percent natural gas. Additionally, 17 percent comes from the Duane Arnold nuclear plant, which Alliant recently sold to FPL. The remaining balance is from hydro and wind, with more wind coming.

Burlington’s single coal unit produces about one fifth of the nearly 5,500 MW of power generated by Alliant, between 1.1 to 1.2 million megawatthours annually. Still a baseload unit after 40 years, Alliant has no plans to retire its coal unit anytime soon. The staff continuously looks at what upgrades are needed to maintain its heat rate of about 10,600 Btu/kWh and plant availability of 90 percent.

Burlington sheds load only at night, allowing the boiler to contract and drop boiler slag. “By 6 a.m., we’re back up to full load,” says Hasten.

Burlington initially burned high sulfur Illinois Basin coal, but switched to low sulfur Powder River Basin coal in 1993. Changes needed to accommodate the fuel switch included mill modifications and a fan upgrade to handle the higher volume of coal going through the plant. Since the fuel switch, more coal is burned because of the PRB coal’s lower heating value. Illinois Basin fuel had a heating value in the 10,600 Btu/lb range compared to about 8,400 Btu/lb for PRB.

Low NO_X burners were added about 15 years ago and most of the plant’s DCS controls have been replaced with an Emerson Ovation system. The plant recently added a third field to the electrostatic precipitator and virtually all fly ash is collected and marketed for concrete manufacture. With an additional market for bottom ash, no ash is land-filled. Cooling is once-through from the river with no cooling towers.

Although the plant’s maintenance plan calls for spring and fall outages each year (totaling about three weeks), it has operated the past three years with just one annual maintenance outage. “We expand our spring outage a couple of days to make up for not taking one in the fall,” Hasten says. Because it’s a 40-year-old plant, operators have a good idea of what needs to be done to keep the plant running for a year. As a result, during forced outages staff can turn to a list of projects to be accomplished.

Alliant has a safety program that, coupled with a company employee involvement initiative, has led to other performance improvements. Alliant’s Zero Injury program strives to engineer out the root causes of any injury that occurs. “Due to embedded practices in a 40-year-old plant, it can be hard to move from having lost time injuries to situations requiring nothing more than a band-aid,” Hasten says.

He adds that while procedural change is important, what’s really needed is employee involvement. The company’s EmPOWER program (“employee empowerment”) has helped do that. Funds are set aside for use by employees who come up with good ideas that will help the business or safety. A local bargaining group committee has the power to implement funds toward those improvements after a brief evaluation by the safety committee. It generally eliminates red tape and allows employees to make improvements. Employees are officially recognized for their contributions.

The strategy has proven popular because an employee may have been bringing something to management for years that never got done because it was not big enough for management to deal with. Now an individual can alleviate a problem and engage employees. And that sometimes produces more engagement on bigger projects.

“When people come through Burlington they are amazed at how clean the plant is and can’t believe how engaged everyone is in being a part of the solution. Our safety and EmPOWER programs have helped that happen,” says Hasten.

Last year’s flood—and Burlington employees’ efforts to protect their plant—prove the point.