Two weeks after biting cold became brutal cold, Wolf Creek Plant Manager BJ Bayer says his workers did their best to keep power flowing safely.
Bayer says Wolf Creek is a base load plant for customers in Kansas and Missouri with a side load option that can be shunted elsewhere if needed. Total capacity is 1,200 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power more than 800,000 homes. The side output typically goes at its capacity and that did not change during the major cold snap. The US Department of Energy says Wolf Creek generates close to one-fifth of the state’s energy.
Bayer says the safest place for Wolf Creek is to be online and operating in conditions like the ones we experienced last week, where overnight lows went under -10 and wind chills went under -30. He says his staff did well to manage risk and avoid jeopardizing output.
Evergy’s plants all feed the Southwest Power Pool, which had to have two days of rolling blackouts because of the strain on its 14-state grid. Evergy spokesperson Gina Penzig says the utility had enough power from its plants to cover customer needs. Evergy hasn’t said how much power may have gone from Wolf Creek to Oklahoma or Texas, but Penzig says it acts with other neighbors whenever there is a regional power need.
Now that operations are back to normal, Wolf Creek is getting ready to shut down for its regular refueling outage starting in late March. Bayer says these outages see plant and contract workers change out 33 to 50 percent of the fuel, which allows staffers to do equipment maintenance, upkeep, refurbishment or replacement if needed. Around 700 to 800 supplemental workers will help with the outage and the facility has a lot of COVID-19 protections in place.
