OAK CREEK - What does "85 percent finished" mean in the world of multiyear, mega-construction projects?

Construction on its $2.3 billion power plant expansion project in Oak Creek should be finished by fall 2010, We Energies officials say.

But after four years of construction work preceded by a long and controversial legal fight, many of the smaller construction pieces that make the whole are in place.

Boil away

The crux of the plant's expansion lies in two brand-new coal-fueled power generating units, which will combine for 1,230 megawatts of energy, enough to power more than a million homes.

On July 23, the first of the two units had a major breakthrough: its boiler fired.

Steam is one way to generate electricity. The boiler provides said steam. So the boiler's first successful firing is "like the first time that you start the car at the end of the assembly line," said Dick Dowdell, site manager for the

expansion project.

On to the coal

The next big step should come in October, when the first coal is ignited, said Irissol Arce, spokeswoman for We Energies. The entire first unit should be fully operational by the end of this year.

All that's left to do there is putting in the remaining electrical and mechanical equipment, cleaning the new boiler and turban generator (which acts as a supercomplex fan which turns steam into electricity), and other smaller start-up activities.

The second unit still needs its boiler. It also needs its turban generator, and the pumps and pipes and other parts and pieces that move the steam and energy from place to place.

Of chimneys

and railroads

Much of the work on the other parts of the project, though, has been finished.

The chimney for the generators to share, which stands at 550 feet tall and is 70 feet in diameter,

is complete.

Same goes for the roughly 2.5 miles of conveyors, 17 miles of railroad track, and new crusher tower that comprise the new "coal handling system," which will supply coal for both the existing plant and the finished update.