Three Primary Goals
According to Roxane Kennedy, vice president of FPL Power Generation Operations, the goals of the WCEC project were threefold: to complete construction on an ambitious schedule, build one of the cleanest and most efficient combined-cycle natural gas power plants in the country, and operate the new plant safely and efficiently.
Beat an Already Ambitious Schedule. The schedule for constructing WCEC was ambitious, even for FPL’s experienced combined-cycle project teams. FPL received approval for construction of WCEC’s first two units in December 2006 and construction began only two months later. However, when a proposed 1,960-MW coal plant tentatively sited near the Everglades got the thumbs down from the Florida Public Service Commission in July 2007, FPL immediately resubmitted an application to add a third unit to WCEC. FPL received the necessary approvals in November 2008 and construction of Unit 3 began the following February.
FPL selected the team of Zachary-Black & Veatch to build all three units under an engineer-procure-construct contract but with the FPL operations team leading the commissioning process. WCEC also leveraged the hard-earned knowledge and experience of its engineers and operations teams from the earliest stages of planning and construction to prevent later operational, safety, and maintenance issues.
Unit 1 entered commercial service in August 2009, followed by Unit 2 in November 2009, seven months ahead of the original project schedule. As this article was written (late July), Unit 3 was beginning start-up work and had just finished fuel gas piping blows. Current projections show that the team will achieve schedule goals for the remaining unit, scheduled to come online in June 2011.
A key measure of the team’s productivity was the time it took to commission each unit. The average time between completing steam blows and commercial operation on the three previous combined-cycle projects was 140 days. On WCEC, the time for Unit 1 was 76 days, and Unit 2 was squeezed to just 38 days.
Exceptional Plant Performance. WCEC’s full-load heat rate is 5,850 Btu/kWh net (LHV), representing 58.3% thermal efficiency. Since entering commercial service, Units 1 and 2 have operated “in the high 90s” for availability.
WCEC is economically dispatched, although, as the FPL fleet’s most efficient gas-fired plant, each power block is usually baseloaded. However, the design of the plant allows each 3 x 1 power block to operate in a 1 x 1 configuration. This is especially helpful for dispatchers when winter loads dip to less than 5,000 MW at night. FPL’s four nuclear units have 3,064 MW of capacity, so efficient low-load operation of gas-fired assets is critical for best economy and stable grid operation.
Put People First. WCEC project leaders championed a number of innovative management practices that enabled the team to achieve its excellent results, including these:
- Development and operations employees worked together from the earliest stages of the project to consider and solve operational issues, including safety and maintenance challenges, throughout planning and construction.
- Skilled operators and maintenance personnel reviewed and learned from simulation training and system assessments, including three-dimensional virtual plant walkdowns.
- Operator training was more robust with a Unit 1 simulator motivating operators to quickly become proficient before the start of plant commissioning.
The result was a record-breaking start-up and commissioning of Unit 1 and Unit 2 without a single operator human error.
— Dr. Robert Peltier, PE is POWER’s editor-in-chief.
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