Project Overview
P&E Company is Sunflower Electric Power Corporation’s go-to partner for lightning-fast scheduled outages, forced outages, and all-hands-on-deck plant emergencies. When Sunflower’s Holcomb, Kansas, facility needs regular maintenance in the form of scheduled outages every 18 to 24 months, P&E Company works multiple shifts, seven days a week to help save the cooperative money — and keep reliable power flowing to its customers. P&E has a large pool of skilled labor and selects the most qualified for each specific job task. Onsite crews during start-up and commissioning guarantee customer satisfaction and that the plant is online and functioning at its highest level.
P&E Company prides itself on quick, accurate and safe work. Outage projects are comprehensive and use the skills of P&E Company’s expert craftspeople, including boilermakers, millwrights, pipefitters and operators. Outage tasks generally include:
- Boiler: The team’s X-ray dissimilar weld capabilities enable high-quality boiler maintenance, which totals 5,000 lbs of welding rods per outage. The boiler is the critical path, and the amount of welding rod that goes into the fire box is used in different areas of the boiler, including the superheater, secondary superheater, firebox walls, reheater and economizer. P&E Company handles repairs on the burner, ash hopper and penthouse; tube panel replacement and repair; and air heater seals and basket replacement.
- Baghouse: P&E Company executes speedy dissimilar-weld thimble replacement, removes and reinstalls bags, replaces floors and walls, replaces doors and door frames on the baghouse and hoppers, repairs conveyors, and makes structural repairs. During a recent outage, the team beat its own record by replacing 1,500 thimbles in only three weeks.
- Scaffolding: P&E Company oversees scaffolding crews, who install 11 semi-truck loads of scaffold each year.
- Tanks: P&E Company completes structural repair and replacement of tanks, including complete floor and ring replacement.
- Ductwork: General repair is always on the docket, as is expansion joint repair and removing and rebuilding dampers.
- Aux Boiler: P&E Company installs new aux boilers and completes tube repairs and stack builds.
- Forced Draft Fan Cooler: Outage tasks include replacing or repairing the fin tube panel and making any necessary part replacements.
- Scrubber Building: P&E Company performs annual maintenance and repair on the scrubber building.
- Gas Turbines: The team repairs stacks, expansion joints and silencers.
Rigging: P&E Company’s experience with heavy rigging makes big lifts possible.