PPL Montana operated Unit 4, at its Colstrip coal-fired power plant, would recommence its operations in November 2009, it got delayed by several months than the expected date of starting its services, reported Reuters, quoting Portland General Electric (PGE), a part-owner of the Colstrip power plant.
PGE informed that the 740MW unit was offline in late March 2009 for scheduled maintenance, and the outage was extended since two turbines were found to be repaired. A PPL spokesman said that the full four-unit power plant is not closed.
PPL Montana, a unit of PPL Corp., revealed that the four-unit, 2,094MW coal-fired power plant is situated west of the Mississippi River.
PPL Montana owns 50% of Units 1 and 2 and 30% of Units 3 and 4. PPL Montana operates the plant for its owners that include Avista, MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co’s PacifiCorp, NorthWestern Energy, Puget Sound Energy PSD.N and Portland General Electric.
PacifiCorp, led by investor Warren Buffett, is a wing of MidAmerican Energy Holdings.
Unit 1 that has a power generation capacity of 307MW commenced its services in 1975, Unit 2 with a capacity of 307 MW began operations in 1976, Unit 3 with 740MW of capacity began operations in 1984 and Unit 4 with a power generation capacity of 740MW began its services in 1986.
PPL Montana said that when all the units at the Colstrip plant are running it uses one railcar of coal every five minutes.