July 8, 2014
Tarong Power Station’s Unit 4, which was placed in cold storage 18 months ago, is on track to return to service this month.
The imminent return of Unit 4 will mean three of Tarong Power Station’s four units will again be available to generate electricity.
Unit 2 is still mothballed.
“I congratulate our team for the great effort in getting the repaired rotor successfully back into place in Unit 4,” Site Manager Tarong Dennis Franklin said this week.
“We are now well on the way to getting Unit 4 back from cold storage later this month.
“This is good news for Tarong but also for the South Burnett as a whole.”
In a faultless 30-minute operation on June 25, the repaired rotor was lifted gently by crane from the floor of the turbine hall, up about 30 metres and along 40 metres, then lowered smoothly back into its original place in the turbine casing of Unit 4.
A number of engineering firsts were created in repairing and returning the rotor to Unit 4.
Inspections late last year found damage to the rotor that had to be repaired. Instead of being sent overseas, it was successfully repaired in Australia, at Maitland in NSW.
It is also the first time Tarong has ever attempted to return a unit from cold storage, and one of only a very few times in Queensland that a power station has attempted to return a unit from cold storage (a unit was returned from cold storage in Gladstone a number of years ago).
NB. The sole generating unit at Tarong North has been offline since June 16 due to an issue with its turbine.
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