Scheduling for Maintenance

LEW HANES: Please tell me about scheduling of the steam plants and other plants as to when they do their maintenance work and testing.

BILL MELTON: In the winter we try to do testing and maintenance work as early in the evening as possible.   It is scheduled at that time in case a problem occurs that might prevent the unit from getting back to full load, or trips.  It gives the plant over night to get the unit back to full load capability or back on line and be ready for the load next morning.

During the summer, it's much different.  You schedule these in the early morning hours up to mid morning at times.  The reason is that even if they trip the unit or they are having problems getting back to full load, you still have many hours until reaching the afternoon peak.  So you have more freedom in the summer time to let them work on equipment than during the winter..