coal per day. Ash was collected from the bottom of the steam generating units (bottom and economizer ash) and captured via electrostatic precipitation from the plant's stack (fly ash); 70% of the plant's total ash was fly ash, and almost all of the fly ash was sold to be used as a concrete additive. Approximately of bottom ash and of sludge were placed in an onsite landfill each year; the disposal site, named Ash Canyon, was approximately in area. A in diameter natural-gas pipeline also ran to the plant from a gas facility near Topock, Arizona to supply the required heat to start the plant, although the pipeline was too small to operate the plant exclusively on natural gas. Electricity was transmitted via two 500kV lines to substations in southern Nevada and southern California. History Commissioning The plant's two identical units went into initial operation in 1971. Early failures The plant's turbine-generators suffered two early failures before 1975. Both of these failures resulted in failures of the turbine-generators, and both failures occurred during unseasonably cold weather. The cold weather proved to be the essential clue. One of the joint owners (LADWP) was assigned to determine the cause of these failures, through use of computer simulations. The power station and its connected 500 kV transmission systems (one to California, the other to Nevada) were subjected to extensive simulations, which ultimately led to identification of the root cause of the failures. When initially installed, the then-new concept of "series compensation" (sets of capacitors connected in series at the sending- and receiving-ends of the transmission lines) were installed, with the expectation that this "series compensation" would reduce or even eliminate the losses inherent with long distance power transmission lines. What was not then known, but was later identified during the simulations, which were performed in the System Development Division of LADWP, was the series resistance of the ACSR transmission lines, when under near freezing conditions, combined with the "series compensation", which was designed to counteract the series impedance of the lines, could, under certain conditions of generation and load, and low ambient temperatures, place an effective negative impedance on the generators, thereby causing a mechanical response by the turbine-generators that resulted in their destruction. This behavior had not been anticipated, and as it had not been anticipated, it could hardly have been simulated prior to the installation and commissioning of the power station.