POWER
August 2023 Previews
COVER FOCUS: POWER GRID AWARDS
Distributed Energy Award: BlockEnergy Microgrid at Southshore Bay Near Tampa, Florida
BlockEnergy partnered with Lennar and the Metro Development Group to launch a 37-home microgrid community within Medley at Southshore Bay, near Tampa. The community has experienced great success. BlockHomes have power systems that are networked together with central controls, supplemented generation, and extra battery power—making the system scalable and storm-resilient. While Hurricane Ian caused 1.1 million power outages across Tampa Bay, BlockEnergy homes never lost power.
Commercial and Industrial Generation Award: Lineage Cold Storage Facility in Colton, California
Lineage partnered with PowerFlex to install a 3.3-MW rooftop solar array at Colton, providing 73% of the facility’s needs, and worked with Mainspring to integrate two onsite 230-kW Mainspring Linear Generators to firm the solar arrays for the additional 27% of the load. For the onsite solar firming, linear generators were the only technology able to provide both dispatchability and fuel flexibility for grid parallel operation and protection against long-duration grid outages.
Smart Grid Award: Tampa Electric Co. Distributed Intelligence Project
Tampa Electric Co. (TECO) captured significant value through the automation of processes and consolidation of data using a Customer Resource Management (CRM) platform. Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) was the next logical step, and the organization decided to develop it in parallel with other initiatives to achieve a transformational vision for new customer experiences, operational programs, and grid management. This included an Advanced Distribution Management System, work management upgrades, smart city internet of things projects, volt/var optimization, and distributed intelligence (DI).
FEATURES
Spotlight on NRG Energy
NRG Energy is a leading energy and home services company that claims to be “powered by people and our passion for a smarter, cleaner, and more connected future.” The Fortune 500 company operates in both the U.S. and Canada, serving about 7.3 million customers, while also advocating for competitive energy markets and customer choice.
Generator Maintenance: Planning for the Bubble
Learn how the generator “bubble” from the early 1990s and the projected power demands of the future are making planning ahead more important than ever when it comes to generator maintenance. Experts explain how data has been used to create a predictive risk model that can help managers better understand and prepare for rewinds in the coming years.
Microgrids Improve Operational Flexibility
The Maine Army National Guard in Presque Isle, Maine, has two micro-CHP (combined heat and power) systems that can generate up to 20 kW, which they use for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning purposes with high energy efficiency and low operational costs. They also have two 10-kW micro-CHP units for back-up power to the facility’s administrative offices, and use solar energy to round out the microgrid. Overall, the system provides independence from the aging power grid during power outages and severe weather. A system in the Kahauiki Village in Honolulu, Hawaii, is also featured.
Water Treatment Methods to Prevent High-Salinity Wastewater
Funding from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Pitch-to-Pilot Desalination Research Program allowed testing of a zero-liquid discharge (ZLD) process train to reclaim the saline blowdown from a 600-ton commercial cooling tower at Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood, Colorado. Treated water from the 1.5-gpm pilot system, consisting of electrocoagulation, ultrafiltration, granular activated carbon, and reverse osmosis was returned to the cooling tower to improve recirculation water quality and prevent the high-saline wastewater from entering the sewershed.
An Online Ash-Cleaning Device Improves Efficiency of Energy-from-Waste Plants
A Stationary Shockwave Ash Cleaning Device combined with a pneumatic booster system is a solution to the hourly cleaning of accumulated ash in energy-from-waste (EfW) boiler bundles. The automated ash cleaning process stably controls ash buildup, further improving power generation efficiency in EfW plants.
Spider Power for Turbomachinery Operators
The intake air of gas turbines and compressors must be free of dust and moisture. This is the only way to avoid costly machine downtime and losses in efficiency and effectiveness. A new cassette filter has been developed for turbomachinery operators to achieve maximum performance and operational reliability. The spiderMaxx can absorb more dust than comparable products and it also enables 15% to 25% longer runtimes with noticeably reduced air pressure, resulting in higher energy efficiency, and thus, higher energy output from the system.
Quantum Computing Can Help Utilities Become More Reliable, Even When the Weather Is Unpredictable
The ability to consistently provide reliable, affordable power is strained by the complexity and consequences of catastrophic storms, record-setting cold, and lethal heat waves. In many communities, extreme weather events are pushing infrastructure to its breaking point. Moreover, as utilities deploy additional technology, such as sensors, they will need greater computational power to harness an increased influx of data. Quantum computing technologies available today can help tackle some of the toughest problems facing the utility industry. These near-term quantum technologies include quantum annealing and quantum-hybrid, which is quantum computing combined with classical computers.