The challenge
TEP Springerville was facing similar issues with their Unit 1 the following year. Remembering Howden's previous year's success, they reached out to Howden Construction Services again to perform a full Turnkey project.
The secondary air preheater project was the critical path in TEP's 2014 spring outage. The main challenge for this project was that Howden was allotted just four weeks to complete the project, which normally requires a full 6+ week time frame.
The Air Preheater was in a congested area of the plant that caused frequent interruptions and delays. The unit was warped and corroded, adding more work and parts required to properly carry out the Turnkey project.
Solution
From the start of the planning phase, throughout the outage, and after startup, Howden took full project responsibility. Through coordination with Howden and the plant management, the crew worked around the clock, seven days a week until completion. Howden served as the single point of contact for the plant and led the project to completion.
Once the unit was online and in steady load, a performance test was conducted and it was found that Howden was successful in reducing the leakage to levels below 10%. After all the data was analyzed it was found that TEP Springerville saved $161,000 annually with their leakage reduction.