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Ready, Set, Restart

In Southern California, a big power project heads toward completion after a two-year hiatus.

By Janet Kreiling
Photographs by Terry Lowenthal/Bechtel

In 2001, work began on the 1,000-megawatt Mountainview natural gas-fired power plant in Redlands, California. It was one of a number of new facilities intended to ease the energy shortage that had caused rolling blackouts throughout the state that year.

The crisis passed, however, and by 2002, the construction boom was over. Power companies ran into financial difficulties and the owner of Mountainview announced that it would not finance continuation of the project. In April 2002, the project was halted with construction only 15 percent complete.

Bechtel refused to abandon hope that the project could be completed. In March 2003, InterGen, a Bechtel-Shell joint venture, purchased the project. A year later, it sold the project to Southern California Edison, which announced that construction would go forward.

A combined cycle facility, the plant will consist of two units (called Units 3 and 4 to differentiate them from the two units of a smaller, decommissioned plant on the same site). Each new unit will comprise two combustion turbine generators, two heat recovery steam generators, and one steam turbine generator.

When workers re-entered the site, they found the modern equivalent of a ghost town. Weather had taken its toll on the landscape, earthworks, and existing foundations. Muck had filled the vaults, pits had to be excavated, soot from the nearby wildfires had settled everywhere, brush had grown up, and animals had moved in.

“There’s very little experience with power plants this large that have been stopped and then resumed,” says Russell Koelsch, project manager at Mountainview for Southern California Edison. “We were in new territory.”

But Bechtel “came out of the gates running,” says Laszlo von Lazar, the company’s project manager for Mountainview. “When we learned work would resume, we did extensive inspections of the equipment and the site and put together an execution plan for everything we needed to do to get going again, including the necessary remediation and rework.”

During the two years the project was on hold, it was necessary to safely store myriad pieces of uninstalled equipment. Some of it, like the heat recovery steam generator casings, had arrived before the suspension and was stored on-site. The generators’ inner workings, on the other hand, arrived later and were stored in a nearby warehouse. Switch gear, pumps, supports, and other equipment was similarly scattered and had to be maintained during suspension and rounded up afterwards.

Tracking down spare parts also proved a challenge, says Koelsch. “Some vendors went out of business; others had moved on and closed the books on the orders,” he says. “It was sometimes difficult to get their attention. But Bechtel kept the contracts alive and helped get the equipment we still needed.”

In addition, he says, “we didn’t anticipate the world we operated in would be different. Permits had expired and regulations had changed, so we had to redo some of that work.”

Thanks to a detailed execution plan put into effect on day one, the site was cleaned up, previously delivered equipment was reconditioned, and the remaining equipment was ordered. “We addressed the problems that arose from letting the plant stand idle for two years,” says von Lazar. “And many of the steps we took to come back from suspension will help in commissioning the plant.”

As if the weather hadn’t caused enough problems during the project’s suspension, Mother Nature threw another punch in the winter of 2004-2005. During a 15-day period, the area was hit by record storms—over 15 inches of rain compared with the annual average of about 11 inches. “You just can’t work when it’s that wet,” says von Lazar.

Afterward, it was back to pumping out the pits and foundations—even the storm water retention pond. In addition, a new route had to be found for moving the heat recovery steam generator modules after the chosen route washed out.

Despite everything, the project progressed so well that less than a year after work resumed, the crew was able to energize Unit 3—switching its power supply from Bechtel’s construction project transformers to permanent transformers. Orville Cutright, Bechtel’s project superintendent, points out that “We hit our target to the day.”

The event went well, says Koelsch, with crews from Mountainview Power, Bechtel, and SCE working smoothly together.

Project officials also could point to an impressive series of additional accomplishments: erecting eight pieces of heavy equipment—the four combustion turbines and the turbine generators—in 24 days; flushing the lube oil systems for all the combustion turbines; installing and aligning heat recovery steam generators for both units; and setting all the major equipment in place. With the heavy equipment installed, the construction team turned to installing large pipe, cable, and instrumentation.

Construction had to be accomplished while protecting wildlife, including hawks and other birds that had taken up residence at the site. Working with a biologist chosen by the project’s owner, Bechtel put together a program that discouraged new nesting and allowed the project to progress without disturbing active nests. It’s all part of the effort that brought this project back to life.