Shoshone power plant in Glenwood Canyon will be producing juice again by May

By John Gardner
Post Independent Staff
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
March 28, 2008

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GLENWOOD CANYON, Colorado — A ruptured penstock on June 20, 2007 left the Shoshone Hydroelectric plant lifeless. But Xcel Energy area manager Fred Eggleston said the plant will be producing power again by the end of April.

“Over the next couple of weeks we will know a little more,” Eggleston said. “We don’t
want to rush it. We want to know that it will work correctly before we go online with it.”

The Shoshone station, located in Glenwood Canyon, produces 14 megawatts of
power and has been in operation for close to 99 years. It was put out of commission
after one of the large penstock pipes that delivers water to the plant ruptured and
caused water and debris to flood the plant. But over the past 10 months the majority
of the project has been cleaned up or replaced.

“The penstock is where the problem was,” Eggleston said. “We realigned both
penstocks and have also reinforced them with concrete barriers.”

Along with repairing the penstocks, the generators that create the electricity have
been rewound. Eggleston said it’s probably the first time the generators have been
rewound in the plant’s history.

“Back 100 years ago, things were done very differently,” he said. “Our guys went into
it and had challenges on trying to figure out how to rewind them.”

Some of the challenges faced were found because the turbines were shipped in and
assembled at the plant during the early 1900s. Regardless, the plant will still produce
the same 14-megawatts of power.

“We did not try to increase the output of the plant,” Eggleston said.

Besides repairing the obvious problems, not much else has been done to upgrade or
change the historical integrity of the plant itself. The generators didn’t necessarily
need to be rewound, either, according to Eggleston, but it seemed like an obvious
time to do it.

“It’s still going to be the same as before,” Eggleston said. “The reason we rewound
them at this time was because the plant was down and it was a good time to do it.”

Eggleston said they will begin to test the systems within the next couple of weeks to
ensure they are working properly before the plant is up and running. The plant
doesn’t serve any residential customers but it does have an impact on Colorado
River water users. The generating station does not consume water, but commands
important flows in the Colorado River, which benefit fish, rafters and multitudes of
other Western Slope water users.

The plant is one of seven hydroelectric power plants owned and operated by Xcel
Energy in Colorado. The estimated cost of repairs is $12 million.

Contact John Gardner: 384-9114jgardner@postindependent.com



Post Independent, Glenwood Springs, Colorado CO