SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - City Water, Light and Power in Springfield announced it will suspend operations of its Dallman Power Plant Unit 33 due to high repair costs and continue a timeline toward retirement of the power plant. 

The city owned utility had planned to retire the coal-fired Unit 33 by Sept. 15, 2023, but the timeline was accelerated due to damage from a possible lightening strike in June. That issue forced the generator offline in the summer of 2021. 

CWLP said recent findings regarding the turbine damage found repairs needed to bring it back online are too costly, and added there would be other operational risks with a unit restart. 

“With extensive damage to the turbine, repair costs over the $1 million mark and the current personnel constraints we face, further operation of Dallman 33 isn’t feasible,” said CWLP Chief Utility Engineer Doug Brown. “While these decisions are tough, the damage to the unit makes it clear that now is the time to begin suspension of operations and work to transition affected jobs.”

Unit suspension will impact 30 jobs at Dallman 33 at the end of the current fiscal year (Feb. 28, 2022), and CWLP said it and City Human Resources will work to help transition employees as they did for Dallman 31 and 32. Those units at the plant were both retired in December 2020. 

"The process to move jobs from retiring plants began in 2020 with a number of employees going to Unit 4 and other positions in the city," a press release from CWLP said. "There are more than 10 vacancies coming up at CWLP and Public Works that may be possibilities for impacted employees."

“While we’ve all understood that this unit had to retire at some point, this next step is a big change and challenge for all of us at CWLP. This unit, as well as Units 31 and 32, have employed generations of outstanding employees who have built and operated them over the years, helping to meet the energy demands of the region for more than half a century,” Brown said. “For that, we all owe thanks for that service and we hope that message is received.”

After the suspension and retirement of Dallman 33, the 200 MW unit known as Dallman 4 will be the sole coal-fired unit in Springfield. CWLP said Dallman 4 and the utility's peaking units can cover all of the CWLP customer load "nearly 100 percent of the time." They said importing of power through regular market purchases, longer term Purchase Power Agreements (PPAs) and/or adding renewable or other energy resources such as solar power, could help further supplement electric resources for CWLP customers after Dallman 33 is retired. 

Officials said they are looking at the possibility of building a solar farm between Springfield and Chatham. It could be part of a public-private partnership and be operation by 2022 or 2023.

Dallman 33, which is a 192 MW coal-fired unit, started operations in 1978. At the time, it more than doubled the power station's total generating capacity as an addition to the Lakeside Power Station and Dallman Units 31 and 32.