A four-year project to upgrade air quality control and improve plant efficiency at Alliant Energy’s Ottumwa Generating Station accomplished all objectives during the same 76-day outage, with results that exceeded expectations. Furthermore, in nearly 2 million work hours, the project achieved an OSHA recordable incident rate of 1.3, with a 0.2 lost-time rate. This $500-million megaproject integrated all improvements within the same permitting process and outage by incorporating a number of efficiencies that were designed to achieve both pollution control and heat rate/output objectives. Through careful scheduling and good management, the team overcame logistical and weather challenges that threatened the project schedule. Generating capacity was boosted 55 MW to 730 MW and air quality control systems have achieved better-than-designed performance.

Ottumwa Generating Station Upgrade

Ottumwa, Iowa

Key Players
Owner Alliant Energy and Mid American Energy
Lead Design Firm Burns & McDonnell
Contractor BWM JV Partnership, Burns & McDonnell and Babcock & Wilcox
Structural, Civil and MEP Engineer Burns & McDonnell