Residents driving past the Hutchinson Utilities Commission cooling tower on State Highway 7 last week likely noticed the missing side panels and construction going on.
HUC General Manager Jeremy Carter said several contractors are preparing the building for the city’s new generators by increasing the building’s water flow capacity. As of Wednesday, contractors worked on and inside the building to abate asbestos and safely replace the building’s pipes with larger ones.
“(We needed to abate) the asbestos left over from the old days (to continue upgrading the building),” Carter said. “Now is a good time because the tower is down (for upgrades) anyway.”
According to Carter, the tower has been down since November 2018. Though the absence of a cooling tower limits HUC’s power generation capabilities, winter and spring are ideal for this kind of work as the generation load is typically smaller.
“If our loads get to a certain level, we have to buy power off the market because we don’t have the capability with the tower down,” Carter said. “This time of year is the off season, so market prices are typically low. Sometimes in the winter, you’ll see energy prices high, but they’re a lot cheaper than what we can generate for, so it’s advantageous anyway.”
The new Caterpillar generators that arrived last fall will likely last up to 50 years. Late last year, HUC awarded a bid for contract work to Fagen Inc. to provide mechanical work, including re-piping the water cooling building, to free up capacity for the new units.
The work is priced at approximately $3.3 million.
The project’s completion deadline is April 19, but contractors will likely continue working into June to finalize the project, Carter said.
