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Sep 05, 2023

Parts of Lakeland Electric Unit 3 power plant crumble in explosions

An explosive boom heard across Polk County on Saturday morning marked the end of

An explosive boom heard across Polk County on Saturday morning marked the end of an era for Lakeland Electric.

Total Wrecking & Environmental, a Buffalo, New York-based demolition company, detonated a first round of explosives at 8:02 a.m. Saturday, causing the 260-foot stack of McIntosh Unit 3 to fall to the north. A second set of explosions brought Unit 3's Selective Catalytic Reduction unit down to the east, roughly in the plant's footprint.

"This is a bittersweet," said Mike Beckham, Lakeland Electric's general manager. "This is kind of always bittersweet, you say goodbye to a plant that has operated so well for 40 years."

Several former Lakeland Electric employees who worked at Unit 3 joined a small group of city officials and demolition experts gathered off Centurion Drive – a short distance east of McIntosh Power Plant – to watch the implosion.

The sound was surprising, catching many of those watching off guard.

"I’ve seen these on YouTube before but never been present, so the boom was louder than I thought," Beckham said laughing.

The sound of the explosions could be heard from as far away as Bartow and Winter Haven, according to viewers of The Ledger's Facebook livestream.

"It's a relief to be safely imploded," Beckham said. "When you know something is inevitable, it's good to go ahead and move on through it and move to the next phase."

Frank Bodami, owner of Total Wrecking, said his employees would be going through the site making sure all explosives were safely detonated before doing some basic cleanup work. The full demolition crews will return Monday to continue dismantling Units 1, 2 and 3.

A second implosion of Unit 3's boiler is tentatively scheduled for March. Bodami said his company plans to auction off the rights to press the button for the explosion to benefit a veterans-related charity. The starting bid will be $3,000, he said, and further details on how to place a bid and the charity selected will be announced shortly.

McIntosh Unit 3 was a coal-powered plant capable of generating up to 365 megawatts of electricity that came online in 1982. Beckham said at the time, the plant was "the new thing."

"It has all the environmental controls you can put on a coal plant," he said. "For a coal plant, it produced power very reliably, affordably and with very low emissions for the 40 years it was in service."

In November 2020, Lakeland Electric realized that McIntosh Unit 3 was not likely to stay operational through the fall of 2024 as initially hoped.

Previously:Lakeland Electric: Unit 3 unlikely to last until fall 2024

Shutting it down:Lakeland approves Unit 3 shutdown, will spend $23.4M to buy power from Orlando

The Chapel:As Lakeland debates a bar going in a former church, could it all come down to jaywalking?

LE's former general manager, Joel Ivy, informed city officials the plant was operating at about 53% of its total capacity. A spring maintenance inspection revealed a "catastrophic failure" forcing the utility to spend roughly $4 million on unanticipated repairs to refurbish the plant's turbine and cooling tower and fix duct work related to its scrubber.

Further issues were discovered at Unit 3 throughout 2020, resulting in a prolonged outage and at least $2 million in additional repairs.

Lakeland commissioners approved decommissioning of Unit 3 in January 2021. It was shuttered in April 2021 as the city's coal pile was rundown.

Beckham said Lakeland Electric's total carbon emissions have been reduced by about 50% since Unit 3 stopped operations.

Lakeland Electric is in the process of building its next generation of power production. It has purchased six natural gas-powered reciprocating internal combustion engines, also called RICE engines. These engines are expected to be delivered in April or May. The engines are expected to be online to provide power to city residents and businesses by 2024, according to Beckham.

Sara-Megan Walsh can be reached at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @SaraWalshFL

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