Utilities · IPPs · Energy Infrastructure
Power Plant Liquidation: Honest Triage Between Resale and Recovery
A retiring generating station sorts into two piles, and nearly all of the money is in sorting them correctly. Some of what is in the building has a global resale market: a turbine with hours left in it, a switchgear lineup, transformers, breakers, motors, and a spare parts warehouse that is often worth more than anyone on site believes. The rest is a copper, aluminum, and steel recovery exercise with a demolition schedule attached. Most firms are set up to do one or the other and will quietly push your whole plant into whichever one they run. KD Auctions prices both sides and tells you which pile each asset belongs in before you commit to a path. We are onsite within 48 to 72 hours of engagement.
The Triage: Resale, Reuse, or Recovery
Every asset in a generating station belongs in one of three buckets. Putting an asset in the wrong one is expensive in both directions: scrapping a serviceable GSU transformer destroys real value, and spending ten weeks marketing something that is worth its copper wastes the calendar you needed for the assets that mattered.
Resale. Documented, serialized equipment with a live buyer market: turbines and generators with hours and records, transformers, medium and low voltage switchgear, breakers, motors, pumps, and controls. Frequency matters here more than anywhere else in industrial disposition. A 50 Hz asset has an export market and a 60 Hz asset has a domestic one, and the campaign is built accordingly.
Reuse and spares. Assets whose value is as parts to somebody running the same frame or the same lineup. A rotor, a set of blades, a spare breaker, or a matched relay panel can be worth substantially more to a specific operator than to the open market, which is a targeted marketing problem rather than an auction problem.
Recovery. Copper windings, aluminum bus, stainless, condenser tubing, structural steel, and cable. Real money, but it is weighed rather than bid, and it should be scheduled against a demolition contractor rather than a catalog.
The judgment call. Most plants have a contested middle: equipment that could go either way depending on condition, records, and who is buying right now. That is where the valuation earns its keep, and it is the section of the report we spend the most time on.
What Comes Out of a Generating Station
Whether the site is a combined cycle plant, a peaker, a cogeneration facility, a retired coal unit, or an industrial powerhouse, the asset classes repeat:
- ✓Prime movers: gas and steam turbines, reciprocating engine gensets, generators, exciters, and gearboxes
- ✓Heat cycle: HRSGs, boilers, condensers, feedwater and boiler feed pumps, deaerators, and heat exchangers
- ✓Cooling: cooling tower cells, fans, gearboxes, circulating water pumps, and intake screens
- ✓Electrical: GSU, auxiliary, dry-type and pad-mount transformers, medium and low voltage switchgear, breakers, MCCs, VFDs, bus duct, and cable
- ✓Protection and control: relays, DCS and PLC hardware, station batteries, chargers, UPS systems, and instrumentation
- ✓Balance of plant: air compressors, water treatment and demineralization, chemical feed, fuel handling, air quality control equipment, and emergency gensets
- ✓Lifting and shop: overhead and gantry cranes, hoists, machine shop equipment, welders, and calibration gear
- ✓Warehouse and spares: the parts inventory, which on a retiring unit is frequently the highest margin category on the site
- ✓Mobile and yard: fleet vehicles, trailers, manlifts, forklifts, and yard equipment
- ✓Lab, control room, and office FF&E, plus IT and communications hardware
The spare parts warehouse deserves separate mention because it is the category most consistently written off. A shelf of OEM spares for a frame that other operators are still running is not surplus inventory. It is the reason a specific buyer calls, and it frequently pulls that buyer into bidding on the larger assets too.
Turbines and Transformers Sell on Paper
Nobody buys a used turbine off a photograph. They buy the operating history: fired hours, start counts, the date and findings of the last major inspection, borescope reports, OEM service records, rotor and blade history, oil analysis, and whether the unit was laid up properly or simply switched off and abandoned. A unit with a complete file and a documented layup is a different asset from a physically identical unit without one, and the market prices that gap aggressively.
Transformers work the same way. Nameplate data, dissolved gas analysis history, oil test results, load history, and bushing and tap changer condition drive the number. PCB status is its own question, and we handle it directly: we require disclosure of known status, coordinate testing where the record is incomplete, and disclose the result in the listing. We do not perform testing, remediation, or disposal ourselves, and we will not market a unit with an unresolved status as if it were clean.
The practical takeaway is that records recovery should start before we do. Where the file is missing, buyers assume the worst case and bid it, which means the hours you spend pulling maintenance history out of a decommissioned CMMS convert directly into proceeds.
Environmental and Electrical Coordination: Our Lane and Yours
Generation sites carry hazards that have to be resolved before a single outside buyer walks the floor. KD Auctions coordinates that work and schedules it. We do not perform it. We are not an abatement contractor, a remediation firm, or a hazardous waste handler, and we do not act as the generator of record.
What we coordinate: licensed contractors for transformer oil evacuation and SF6 recovery, asbestos and lead surveys ahead of buyer access, PCB testing where status is unknown, and confirmation with your electrical authority that de-energization, grounding, and lockout are complete and verified before inspection windows open. Site access is controlled, escorted, and documented, and every rigger works to your site safety rules rather than their own.
Assets that cannot be cleared for safe inspection and removal do not go into the sale. That is a firm line. It protects the seller from a pulled lot after bidding closes, and it protects the sale from the reputational damage that one unsafe removal does to every future buyer relationship.
Utilities, IPPs, Developers, and Lenders
Regulated utilities. Internal approval chains, retirement accounting, and asset-by-asset disposition records that survive audit. We work to your documentation standard, provide per-unit settlement detail rather than a lump number, and coordinate around public disclosure requirements and community notice where they apply.
IPPs and merchant operators. The clock is usually a PPA expiry, a capacity auction result, or an interconnection decision, and net proceeds against a fixed date is the whole question. We give you the recovery range by path and the calendar each path implies, then build backward from your date.
Developers and EPC contractors. Cancelled and rescoped projects leave new, crated, never-energized equipment: transformers, switchgear, breakers, and balance of plant packages. This is the strongest selling category in the entire sector, because a buyer gets new equipment without the lead time, and it should never be dispositioned as surplus scrap.
Lenders, receivers, and counsel on stranded assets. AMEA-certified, USPAP-compliant Orderly Liquidation Value and Forced Liquidation Value opinions accepted by lenders, courts, and the IRS, a documented commercially reasonable marketing record, and settlement accounting reconciled line by line against the inventory. We work at the direction of counsel and do not give legal advice.
Paths, Calendar, and the Demolition Handoff
A managed auction runs 6 to 10 weeks from engagement to settlement and is fully online, which matters more in generation than in any other sector because the resale bidders are genuinely global. Where a single turbine, GSU, or switchgear lineup has an identifiable strategic buyer, private treaty usually clears more than an auction floor, and we invite pre-auction offers on major assets. Where the date governs, an outright cash purchase produces an offer in 24 to 72 hours, funds typically 3 to 7 days after acceptance, and removal in 1 to 2 weeks. A hybrid, with a cash floor on the anchor assets and the balance taken to auction, is common on larger sites.
The sequencing point that saves the most money is the handoff to demolition. Resale assets have to be identified, sold, and removed before a salvage crew mobilizes, because once the torch is on site the distinction between a serviceable breaker and a pile of copper stops being made. We coordinate directly with your demolition or salvage contractor to establish that boundary in writing, with a dated cutoff after which anything remaining is theirs.
Our fee is tailored to the engagement and quoted upfront, and most sellers pay nothing out of pocket. Settlement is per lot, with gross proceeds, buyer's premium collected, itemized expenses, and net proceeds documented. Founded by Michael and Arlene Treger in 1996, KD Auctions has run hundreds of auctions since, is licensed and bonded in every state that requires it, and markets every sale to our 500,000+ industry contacts.
Credentials & Standing
Licensed and bonded.
Auctioneer licensed and bonded in every state that requires it.
Court-accepted appraisals.
AMEA-certified and USPAP-compliant, accepted by lenders, courts, and the IRS.
Industry membership.
MDNA, AMEA, NAA, and NABT.
Insured and documented.
Professional liability and errors and omissions coverage, with credential and insurance documentation available on request.
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a retired turbine worth more than its scrap value?
Usually yes, sometimes dramatically, and occasionally no. It turns on fired hours, start counts, the last major inspection, whether the unit was properly laid up, and whether the frame is one other operators are still running and buying parts for. A documented unit with life remaining has a global buyer market. A unit with no records that sat unprotected through several winters may genuinely be a recovery asset, and we will tell you that rather than market it for ten weeks and fail.
Can you sell transformers, and how do you handle PCB and oil testing?
Yes, transformers are one of the most reliably marketable categories on a generation site. We require disclosure of known PCB status, coordinate licensed testing where the record is incomplete, and publish the result in the listing. We do not perform testing, remediation, or disposal ourselves, and a unit with unresolved status does not get marketed as clean. Dissolved gas analysis history and oil test records materially raise what a transformer brings.
How do you decide what goes to auction and what goes to scrap?
Asset by asset, during the valuation, before anything is committed. We price the resale case and the recovery case for each significant item and recommend the higher net, factoring in removal cost, records, condition, and how deep the buyer pool is right now. You get that in writing as a range by path, and where the call is genuinely close we say so instead of presenting a false precision.
Do you coordinate with our demolition or salvage contractor?
Yes, and getting that boundary right is one of the higher value parts of the engagement. Resale assets need to be sold and removed before a salvage crew mobilizes, because after that point serviceable equipment gets processed as metal. We work with your contractor to set a dated cutoff in writing, coordinate site access between our buyers and their crews, and sequence so the two operations do not collide.
Do you handle asbestos, lead, or environmental remediation?
No. KD Auctions is not an abatement or remediation contractor and does not act as the generator of record for hazardous waste. We coordinate licensed contractors, schedule surveys and clearance ahead of buyer access, and keep anything that cannot be cleared out of the sale entirely. Those responsibilities remain with the site owner, and we will not suggest otherwise to win an engagement.
Can you appraise generation assets for a lender or for financial reporting?
Yes. Our appraisals are AMEA-certified, USPAP-compliant, and accepted by lenders, courts, and the IRS. We provide Orderly Liquidation Value, Forced Liquidation Value, Fair Market Value, and Replacement Cost New opinions with full methodology documentation, desktop or onsite, with expedited turnaround available when a credit committee or a reporting deadline requires it.
How quickly can you mobilize, and what does the engagement cost?
We are typically onsite within 48 to 72 hours of engagement, and faster where assets are exposed or a site is being handed over. That first visit establishes the inventory baseline and produces enough information for a preliminary value range by path. The fee is tailored to the engagement and quoted upfront, and most sellers pay nothing out of pocket, with the complete economics in writing before you commit.
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