SaskPower generation plant still out of commission after June flood

SaskPower is still working to get one of the province’s largest power plants up and running more than two months after it flooded.

The Poplar River Power Station – located around 210 kilometres southwest of Regina – was knocked out of commission following heavy rainfall on June 2.

According to SaskPower spokesperson Joel Cherry, water levels rose quickly and a nearby berm overtopped, causing water and debris to flood into the plant.

“A lot of water spilled down the waterway that leads into the plant and it washed a tremendous amount of debris – mud and hay and that sort of thing – right into the plant,” Cherry said.

The issue for crews now is to clear all the plant’s pipes and equipment of debris – which is a time-consuming task.

“There’s a lot of water that’s needed to run any thermal power plant,” Cherry explained.

“We use boiling water to create steam and use cooling water to cool it down so there’s a lot of water going in and out of the plant. The tubes were basically filled with debris and we’ve been flushing it out and trying to get it as clear as possible but we’re still getting some debris in there.”

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Cherry says an outage like Poplar River’s case is not a normal issue.

“There’s a lot of complex machinery used in these facilities and outages do occur,” he said.

“One of this scale though – where we had the whole facility flood and then having to go to such lengths to get it up and running – it’s not a usual thing.”

The need for power usually peaks during the winter. However, Cherry says the Crown has seen some record demands – with consumption up to 3,700 megawatts on July 31.

The coal-fired Poplar River plant generates 582 megawatts of baseload power – meaning when it's running it will generate regardless of weather conditions – unlike wind or solar.

Its absence has SaskPower changing its approach.

“It’s a major part of our generating fleet,” Cherry said.

“We are seeing high demand and accommodating that without one our plants means we have to change the way we operate our grid a little bit. We can do things like deferring maintenance – we’re trying to secure imports wherever possible and just trying to make sure we have adequate power to provide to our customers.”

As for when the plant will be back up and running – Cherry says it’s unclear exactly when but progress is being made.

“We’re leery to give a specific timeline because anytime you restart a power plant even at the end of a planned outage there can be some hiccups along the way,” he said.

“We’re making progress though and were at the point where there should be water running clean through there and we’ll be able to get that equipment back up and running.”