Point Lepreau shut down again for repairs that could cost $10.5M
Problems with turbine system also forced plant offline in June
Work on the reheater components of the turbine system is expected to take about three weeks and cost an estimated $10.5 million, according to a statement issued by NB Power late Friday afternoon.
Problems with the turbine system also forced the plant offline in early June.
"We are confident this is just a small problem," NB Power President Gaetan Thomas had said at the time. "These are normal in the first few years of a restart."
The plant was taken offline again on Friday to facilitate the repairs, the statement said.
It's the plant's third shutdown in the last few months and one of several since it came back online from a $1.4 billion, four-and-a-half year renovation in November 2012.
Energy to replace the lost production during the outage has already been secured at "low market prices," it said.
"While the cost of the station being offline can be up to a million dollars a day in the winter, estimates for this outage are less than half that cost due to low energy prices in the New England energy market."
The plant operated at about 80 per cent reactor power in July, putting about 550 megawatts on the New Brunswick grid. That's about 54 per cent of the total net generation from NB Power generating stations during the month, according to the statement.
Point Lepreau is expected to return to full power once it's reconnected to the grid, NB Power said.