SRP conducts once-in-a-decade maintenance to prepare for summer heat
TEMPE, AZ (AZFamily) — Crews with the Salt River Project are working overtime to make sure they’re ready for the summer heat. All that power to keep you cool and keep your house running comes from large electrical plants like the Kyrene Generating Plant in Tempe, which produces power to 130,000 homes in the Valley.
Right now, the plant is undergoing major maintenance which they do only about once roughly every decade. This includes removing their nearly 100,000-pound gas turbine.
Crews used a crane, which is very technical and very time-consuming. “They have to get the dead center of gravity on that when they’re lifting it out, so it doesn’t swing either way. We don’t want any metal-to-metal contact,” said Jason Powell, the senior manager for Salt River Project’s Kyrene Plant.
Crews will be inspecting the turbine for any wear and tear to make sure that there are no failures, especially during the summer’s extreme heat.
“You look at electrical needs from a basic household, from your air conditioner. That’s a big one that would be a really critical need during the summertime from every Valley resident,” Powell said.
SRP will wrap up its inspection next month and get the plant back online to power up the thousands of homes across the Valley. “Doing that along the way helps prevent untimely outages in summertime. That’s what we really want to avoid. But we also want to produce very safe and reliable power,” Powell said.
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