In a recent interview with APPA, Chris Weiner, Executive Director of Electric Services for the City of Coffeyville, Kansas, details the public power utility’s capital improvement plan and discusses the possible replacement of a steam plant in the city.
Weiner made his remarks as a guest on APPA’s Public Power Now podcast.
The department recently completed a five-year capital improvement plan along with budget updates.
When asked to detail what's included in that plan, he noted that the leadership team at the city recently changed.
“The city manager has been here about nine months, and so when he came in,” he brought in a few other individuals to join a leadership team.
In Kansas, “you've got to get a budget submitted to the state well in advance of the next fiscal year. Typically, that's done in August of each year, and so he had just gotten on board.”
Weiner joined in mid-August and so there was an effort to get a budget sent into the state for this 2025 calendar fiscal year.
“It was challenging and so we're going through the process of getting updated budget figures and so I've done that for my departments that I supervise and manage, obviously.”
And in conjunction with that there was an effort “to build out a five year capital plan and so that's got a lot of things in it.”
Weiner said he has planned in 2025 “about $5.5 million of total investments in capital improvements, which also includes some equipment improvements. Some of that is for large scale projects that are already underway.”
For instance, “we've got a $16.8 million project to upgrade one of our substations here that serve our largest customer, which is the Coffeyville Resources nitrogen facility and their subsidiaries -- they're our largest customer.”
Weiner noted that “Our overall peak load is about 107 megawatts and they make up about 70 of that, so that's a large portion obviously of our overall load and so we're trying to get their transformers and that substation all upgraded to allow…for some better redundancy as well as opportunity for growth.”
Overall that is about a $16.8 million project “but we're looking at being reimbursed for the majority of that because it's an upgrade that's specifically for them.”
So the taxpayers “won't have to take on the majority of that, obviously, but certainly we're excited for the growth that that opportunity provides -- this project will provide.”
He also said that the Department is going through “at the moment an engine overhaul of our three Wartsila units. We’ve got three Wartsila gas generating units that were manufactured in 2016.”
The Department “went operational with those in 2017 and so we're about 22,000 hours on those units right now. We're going through an overhaul on those engines, it's about a $3.25 million project. And we spent a good chunk of that last year in the actual parts and components for that, but now we've got the labor ongoing as we speak,” Weiner said.
“I was just out there right before this interview and meeting with the team and trying to go over what we're seeing. We found a couple things we need to address on that that weren't planned but overall we're doing pretty well and moving forward on that project. Just under $3 million -- $2.8 million substation improvements out here also already in the works -- a lot of that work got done last year, ordering parts and what not, but upgrade improvements out here at the substation.”
Also, the Department has a $300,000 project to “upgrade our SCADA system here in the community.”
In addition, “We're looking at two bucket trucks for the utility at about half million dollars, a new digger derrick for $400,000 [and] a boring machine at about $225,000 -- that'll be shared between the electric utility, water utility and fiber utility trying to get some underground lines buried.”
And then a bucket truck “for a tree crew that we're trying to get started, so just in 2025 alone there’s a lot of money we're looking at trying to spend to get us into a position that, hey, we're able to take care of some items that have been deferred for a lot of years.”
In 2026 “we're looking at about just under $1,000,000 for a line pulling tensioner and boom lift are the big items there and then ‘27 about another $1,000,000 for another bucket truck and a backyard machine.”
In 2028, the utility is “looking about just over a million for a power plant bypass on our transmission system to try and give us some redundancy there and be able to take part of our substation offline to be able to do maintenance without having to kill the power entirely, and then in 2029 and 2030, looking at $150,000 and $75,000, respectively.”
Weiner anticipates those numbers “will go up as we move forward in these next few years, but don't have anything planned at this point in time, so we've got a lot overall in the queue I should say, but looking forward to hopefully getting that kicked off here shortly with getting the budget approved.”
Meanwhile, the Electric Services Department is looking at potential options for the possible replacement of the city's 30 MW steam plant.
“We do have a steam engine plant. It's our downtown power plant. It's very iconic for the community. We've got on top of that plant, Coffeyville Municipal Power and Light all lit up” at night.
There are seven engines in the power plant. The power plant itself was built in 1901.
“And they put in 7 engines over the years, but only one is still operational. It's the steam plant we were just talking about. Its nameplate capacity when it was installed in 1966 was 38 megawatts.”
It's a General Electric steam turbine “and it’s worked great for us, worked terrific for the community over the years. But at this point it's almost 60 years old. With that 38-MW GE turbine that brought the community up to 78 and a quarter megawatts of production out of that power plant,” he said.
“Today, it's the only one remaining that operates out of that power plant,” Weiner said.
“We've built this new power plant out here where my office is at and it's got the three Wartsila engines that are undergoing the overhaul right now, but certainly the steam engine -- we've reduced its overall operating capacity to about 30 megawatts even though its nameplate is up to 38 because it is…60 years old,” he said.
“We really don't want to try and run that. A lot of things break if we try and max that out for any length of time. We do need to replace it. It's not nearly as efficient at making energy as what today's modern engines are, but it's been a workhorse.”
Weiner is talking with some consultants, “trying to get a study approved where we're looking at new generation. With our 56 megawatts out here, we've got these three Wartsila piston engines which are 18.7 megawatts each we're looking at.”
This facility “itself was constructed with the intent and the design that it could be expanded easily. So do we look at going ahead and...expanding this facility? Do we double the size of this facility? Do we go solar? The city has ample land available for a solar farm. Do we go with some battery storage?”
He said all options are on the table. “We're looking at just trying to come up with an idea of what makes the most sense for our customers and our community,” he noted.
“We want to make sure that we're able to provide a stable, reliable power source for our community into the future and that would be cheap energy so we can try and stabilize and provide long term, good, cheap energy for our community.”
