Investigation into Comanche 3 power plant finds several issues that led to unplanned outages that lasted longer than a year

PUEBLO, Colo (KRDO) -- Despite being the newest coal-powered plant built in Colorado, an investigation looking into issues at Xcel Energy's Comanche 3 power plant in Pueblo found it has gone through more than 700 days of unplanned outages since its creation in 2010.

The report, released by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission this week, details the problems Comanche 3 has gone through. It cites, lack of training for workers, poor maintenance practices, unidentified equipment defects, and human error led to two major outages in 2020, which caused Comanche 3 to be out of commission for 373 days.

The first happened on January 13, 2020, when the Comanche 3 turbine created a loud noise and vibrations occurred. The plant was shut down until June 2, 2020. That same day they experienced their second major issue when workers tried getting Comanche 3 up and running again.

The report says on June 2, 2020, there was an issue with the lube oil system, which is considered "critical to the operation." This led to the second shutdown, which lasted the rest of 2020 and into 2021.

According to the report, the costs for the repairs totaled roughly $25 million from just those two instances.

KRDO reached out to Xcel Energy for comment on the report and we received the following statement from one of its media relations representatives.

We are closely reviewing the Colorado Public Utilities Commission’s report on Comanche Unit 3 in Pueblo. Meanwhile, we are committed to the continued safe and reliable operation of the plant through its proposed early retirement in 2040."

Xcel Energy representatives