Mississippi Power says it expects the Kemper County Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) facility to be in service by April 30.

In a March 16 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Southern Co. and its Mississippi Power utility said the plant had suffered tube leaks in one of the plant's synthetic gas coolers. This impacted one of the plant's two gasifier units known as gasifier "A." Engineers started an outage to perform repairs.

Kemper County IGCC could enter full service on April 30.The mishap, the latest in a string of challenges that have dogged the clean coal power plant, delayed the expected in service date.

Mississippi Power now says in a statement that the tube leaks and repairs to one of the project’s syngas coolers have been completed. The April 30 in-service date reflects the time needed to restart that portion of the plant and to achieve integrated operation of all plant systems.

Integrated operation includes the simultaneous operation of each of the plant’s two gasification, gas cleanup, and generation systems, the utility says. While the repair was required for the syngas cooler of one gasification system, the other gasification system remained in operation and has been providing syngas for chemical product production and electric power generation.

The company’s February report to the Mississippi Public Service Commission contains an increase in the cost estimate subject to the cost cap for the Kemper IGCC of approximately $70 million. These costs will not be paid by customers. They include an adjustment of approximately $45 million related to extending the projected schedule through April 30, $15 million related to start-up fuel, and $10 million primarily related to outage work and operational maintenance and improvements. The total cost of Kemper eligible for recovery from customers is around $4.2 billion.

Kemper is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over the $2.2-billion cost estimate given in 2010 when construction began. Read more about the Kemper County IGCC plant here.