Alliant building generator farms to boost reliability

Tag : Backup Generato

CEDAR RAPIDS — Alliant Energy, operating without its twoflood-damaged Cedar Rapids power plants, is creating a network of22 temporary generators to provide a backup power source.

The utility this week began developing temporary "generator farms"at four existing substations. They will be enough to supply 53megawatts of standby power when they are completed in about twoweeks, Alliant Energy spokesman Ryan Stensland said.

The generator capacity will be only a fraction of the 240 megawattsof power that were knocked out with the flooding at the PrairieCreek Generating Station and Sixth Street Generating Station. Thatcould still be enough to maintain reliability if the maingenerating station still serving the area, FPL Energy's DuaneArnold Energy Center, should have to shut down temporarily for anyreason, Stensland said.

Some of the generators will be obtained from existing customersthat rented generators to continue operating during theflood-related outage, but can now obtain grid power.

The generator farms will help Alliant defend against one of thelargest potential concerns surrounding the loss of the Cedar Rapidsgenerating stations — what if the 592-megawatt Duane ArnoldEnergy Center has an outage?

Stensland said that isn't expected to happen, but if it did Alliantwould need to feed power at a certain voltage level to the nuclearpower plant to help it restart operations.