POWER

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., Aug. 9, 2010 –  Washington is abuzz with talk of a lame-duck session of Congress after the November mid-term elections. Many pundits seem to assume that the Democratic leadership will call the solons into session after the elections (with the Democrats having done very poorly, possibly losing their control of […]

Every power engineer must have a firm grasp of the rudiments of how fuel is processed to produce electricity in a power generation facility. With this article, we conclude our three-part series on the essentials of recovering heat from flue gas to dry and process coal, with the goal of improving overall plant operating efficiency.

Progress Energy has incorporated online combustion optimization/tuning to eliminate furnace reducing atmospheres at its Asheville Plant. The optimization project utilized individual burner airflow measurement and continuous burner coal flow measurement to adjust burner air/fuel ratios. The result: significantly improved boiler combustion.

The EPA, determined to regulate U.S. carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act, found that the low limits set by the Act for any “regulated pollutant” led to, in the EPA’s words, “absurd” results. Undeterred, the EPA developed the “Tailoring Rule,” which reinterprets the Act to apply to only larger emissions sources. Texas eloquently rejected the EPA’s legal gymnastics.

When—not if—we pass climate legislation, we will put the U.S. on a path toward a low-carbon electric generation sector. As part of this shift, we’ll need more transmission, including lines to wind and solar power plants that are sometimes located far from today’s power grid. The question is: How do we plan for these new lines and how should we pay for them?

There is an idea that has been around for a long time, at least since the fall of 1973: All that stands between the U.S. and an abundant energy future is a lack of spending on research and development. It is as though the Knights Templar could find the Holy Grail, if only the Pope would commit just a few more resources to the hunt.

Scuttling a high-profile “public nuisance” lawsuit, a federal appeals court has reversed a lower court ruling that required the Tennessee Valley Authority to accelerate plans to install pollution controls at four TVA coal-fired power plants to reduce the amount of pollution blowing into western North Carolina, saying the lower court decision could lead to other public nuisance suits that would wreak havoc on federal and state regulatory regimes for combating air pollution.

Saying they have “grave concerns” about the agency’s two-option proposal to regulate coal combustion ash, 31 members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have urged the Environmental Protection Agency to continue to regulate coal ash as a non-hazardous waste, saying an EPA proposal to designate it as a “special” hazardous waste eligible for reuse would lead to costly and unnecessary management and disposal requirements.

An Environmental Protection Agency proposal to tighten sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides limits in 31 states and the District of Columbia to address transported air pollution fails to give utilities and state air regulators sufficient time to develop rules and install controls, according to American Electric Power Co. Officials from the EPA and New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group said utilities already had begun making investments to cut emissions and they believed the agency’s compliance schedule could be met.

Many claim that wind generation is beneficial because it reduces pollution emissions and does not emit carbon dioxide. This isn’t necessarily the case. When wind is introduced into a generation system that uses carbon technologies to back up the wind, it actually reduces the energy efficiency of the carbon technologies.

California, New Mexico, and three Canadian provinces—partners of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI)—last week released a detailed plan for a regional cap-and-trade program to curb greenhouse gases (GHG) starting in January 2012. If the plan reaches fruition, it would be three times larger than a program under way in 10 eastern states.

Hawaii’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) last week denied a request by Hawaiian Electric Co. (HECO) to extend pilot testing for its advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) project to 5,000 more smart meter because of cost concerns. The move poses a major hurdle for the utility’s overall smart grid initiative.

Only 700 MW of wind power were added in the U.S. during the second quarter of 2010—a drop of 57% and 71% when compared to second quarter numbers from 2008 and 2009, respectively, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reported last week.

New York state and Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) plan to sue Homer City Station, a 1,884-MW coal-fired power plant in Pennsylvania, for its alleged contributions of the region’s sulfur dioxide emissions.

The Department of Energy last week finalized a $117 million loan guarantee for a 30-MW Hawaiian wind power plant, and this week it said it would offer a $17.1 million loan guarantee to support construction of a 20-MW energy storage system using lithium-ion batteries.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers earlier this year awarded its first Section 10 permit ever to a commercial wave-powered demonstration facility planned for installation in the Gulf of Mexico. The novel offshore platform, dubbed the SEADOG, will use a buoy and piston mechanism combined with a water wheel to generate electricity and desalinate water.

HD Electric Co.’s Phase Rotation Meter (PRM) is used to determine the leading phase of any two phases in a three-phase conductor system. The PRM is a dual-range 0 to 5 kV and 0 to 15 kV device that can be used as high as 45 kV when optional resistor sticks are added. It consists of two […]

Sweden Reverses Ban, Approves Nuclear Reactor Replacements Sweden’s parliament on June 18 reversed an earlier decision and passed the center-right coalition government’s landmark proposal, made last year, that allows for the replacement of the country’s nuclear reactors at the end of their life span. The country had voted in 1980 to phase out its 12 […]

The SEL-734P Portable PQ Meter is a new metering solution from Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) that addresses the need for complete and portable power quality monitoring. In addition to the meter, the kit includes three-phase voltage and current inputs, voltage leads, and split-core CTs, all secured in a ruggedized case. ACSELerator QuickSet SEL-5030 software, included […]

A new family of Rotating Line Moles (RLM) from NLB gives users more than 40 choices for cleaning pipes and tubes with high-pressure water. Designed for tubes with diameters from 0.5 inch to 1.5 inches (1.27 cm to 3.81 cm), the family features operating pressures of 10,000 psi or 20,000 psi (700 bar or 1,400 […]

When heat exchanger tubes—sometimes numbering a thousand or more per unit—begin to crack or wear, the effects can lead to a cascade of subsequent failures in adjacent tubes. If too many tubes are plugged, heat exchanger effectiveness is compromised, and power generation may be curtailed. If conventional mechanical plugs are used, they can break loose, leak, and fail. At that point, the replacement of a very costly heat exchanger is imminent.

LUDECA has introduced VIBXPERT II, the latest addition to its PRUEFTECHNIK family of portable route-based vibration data collectors. VIBXPERT II is rugged and lightweight and combines the advantages of a rapid processor with an energy-efficient color VGA display. Enhanced with an Fmax of 51KHz and up to 102,400 lines of resolution, all machinery problems can […]

Power plant operators, especially those located in countries with enforceable carbon emissions standards, are concerned about their CO₂ emissions. But for Helsingin Energia—which provides power, heating, and cooling for Helsinki, Finland’s 300,000 residents—the main concern is local warming, not global warming. In Helsinki, temperatures on midsummer afternoons only reach an average 21C, and for half the year daytime temperatures are below 10C.

Heise precision pressure instruments provide the high-accuracy measurements required for critical test, calibration, and process applications. The unique blend of product configurations includes the Heise 0.1% precision dial pressure gauge, the modular PTE-1 handheld calibrator, and high-accuracy digital pressure indicators and transducers. With ranges from 0.25 inches of water to 100,000 psi and accuracies to […]

Stacks at power generating stations may be low maintenance, but they are not no maintenance. The cost of preventing corrosion may be as little as $10,000, but the cost of repair or replacement could be many times that or even put your plant out of commission until the stack problem is corrected.

A proven solution for immediate and long-term job creation came from President Barack Obama and his administration earlier this year: investment in U.S. nuclear energy. Bulldozers in Georgia are already on the move and making preparations for expansion of a nuclear plant that has achieved several approvals, and long-awaited jobs in the skilled labor sector could materialize there within months.

In October of last year, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) issued a study finding that maintaining electric reliability will require significant acceleration in the siting and construction of new transmission lines. The NERC study is indicative of growing concerns that changes to the current transmission planning process are necessary to maintain reliability and accommodate interconnection of the massive amounts of renewable resources expected to come online over the next 10 to 20 years.

Luminant used remnants of the ill-fated Twin Oaks and Forest Grove plants (which were mothballed more than 30 years ago) to build the new two-unit 1,600-MW Oak Grove Plant. Though outfitted with equipment from those old plants, Oak Grove also sports an array of modern air quality control equipment and is the nation’s first 100% lignite-fired plant to adopt selective catalytic reduction for NO_x control and activated carbon sorbent injection technology to remove mercury. For melding two different steam generators into a single project, adopting a unique and efficient “push-pull” fuel delivery system, assembling a tightly integrated team that completed the project on time and within budget, and for completing what was started almost four decades ago, Oak Grove Power Plant is awarded POWER magazine’s 2010 Plant of the Year award.

With commercial operation of Madison Unit 3, Cleco Power now claims bragging rights for owning the largest 100% petroleum coke–fired circulating fluidized bed power plant in North America. For using readily available fuel in an environmentally attractive manner, adopting fuel-flexible combustion technology, balancing the utility’s generation portfolio, and adopting an innovative fuel-handling system design, Madison Unit 3 is the winner of POWER’s 2010 Marmaduke Award for excellence in operation and maintenance. The award is named for Marmaduke Surfaceblow, the fictional marine engineer and plant troubleshooter par excellence.

A national R&D program has been under way to develop materials technology for constructing boilers and turbines capable of operating at advanced ultrasupercritical steam conditions in pulverized coal plants. The large-scale, multiyear, joint government/industry project seeks to increase the efficiency of power plants by increasing their steam conditions up to 1,400F (760C) at 5,000 psi (35 MPa). The ongoing project has already identified the materials and processes for successful operation at these higher steam conditions.