Springfield’s largest power generator is offline but CU assures it will not cause interruptions or higher bills

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - The John Twitty Energy Center in southwest Springfield consists of two coal-fired units that help provide power to over 106,000 City Utilities customers over 320 square miles in Greene and northern Christian County.

Unit 1 has been in operation since 1976 and Unit 2 went online in 2010.

During non-peak times of the year when air conditioners and heaters are not being used extensively, power plants undergo routine maintenance. And Unit 2, the city’s largest generator, had its routine maintenance turn into a scenario that’s comparable to taking your car in for a tune-up and finding something else was wrong.

“We put it back in service and it just wasn’t creating as much electricity as it needs to be producing or as much as it was before we put it back in service,” Alexander explained. “The outage has actually been going on since the first part of October.”

Customers haven’t noticed anything different though because while a component of Unit 2 has been sent off to be fixed, Unit 1 is still in service and more importantly City Utilities can buy from outside power sources as they’re doing now.

“We have a back-up system with the Southwest Power Pool where we buy-and-sell energy on a daily basis,” Alexander pointed out.

The Southwest Power Pool is a nonprofit corporation mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ensure reliable supplies of power, adequate transmission infrastructure and competitive wholesale electricity prices on behalf of its members who are located in15 states in the central part of the country. CU’s involvement in that consortium means that in this case at least, local customers don’t have to worry about Unit 2′s repairs causing power interruptions or higher bills.

“That’s why we have membership in the Southwest Power Pool,” Alexander said. “When we sell our power into the market it can benefit our customers because we’re selling excess energy we’ve created that keeps our costs lower. When we need to buy power there are times that we can purchase it at a lower cost than it would be if we made it here. So it’s a give-and-take situation. But what that market does is allow us to come down for scheduled maintenance and still be able to serve our customers. And we do that scheduled maintenance on all our power-generating units typically every 18-24 months.””

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