On Dec. 13, MSU Campus Services will conduct the annual Power Assurance Test of the Generation Plant to verify its ability to operate during a prolonged area-wide power outage. Power will be shut down and taken off the Starkville Utilities’ system at 3:30 a.m. and will be off for up to 60 minutes until power is restored by the MSU Power Generation Plant. Over the next three and a half hours, the MSU Facilities Management personnel will operate the 26 Megawatt turbine system through various generation modes, verifying the system’s proper operation during an extended outage. During this testing, further outages are unlikely but may occur. Normal utility power will be restored from Starkville Utilities’ system before 7:30 a.m.

This outage will not affect the areas served by 4-County Power Association or Starkville Utilities connections, such as Technology Park, North Farm, Softball & Tennis, and South Farm.

The main purpose of the MSU Power Generation Plant is to function as a Peak-Shaving Plant, reducing demand on Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) electrical power grid.  During peak-shaving, the plant picks up all but 1 MW of MSU’s electrical demand.  This demand is approximately 21 MW in the midst of summer when all of the university’s cooling systems are engaged. 

 A secondary purpose of the plant is to provide power when an area wide outage occurs that will last for a significant duration. For this situation, planning and preparation for this type of failure is on-going in Campus Services. The ability to fully power the university was illustrated during the loss of the TVA feeder on Sept. 1 that feeds parts of Starkville, including MSU’s main campus. The Power Generation Plant was able to restore power to campus while TVA determined the issue and restored the feeder.

“We test to ensure the system will operate when we really need it, such as September 1st, 2021,” explained MSU Associate Director for Utilities Dave Maharrey.  “Reoccurring tests are necessary for continued reliability of the University mission.” 

“The generation plant has been in place since 2005.  Although the facility operates frequently in peak-shaving mode, we have employed back-up power capabilities of the plant a few times when TVA and Starkville Utilities had system disruptions or were performing maintenance on their electrical distribution infrastructure,”  MSU Director for Facilities Management Tommy Verdell said. “Those area-wide utility outages demonstrate the benefit of this plant to our campus.“