POWER

Stretching meager maintenance dollars is a way of life for most maintenance staff. In past years, the cost of an infrared (IR) camera usually came down to a choice between a low-resolution 160 x 120-pixel camera or no camera at all. If the camera was chosen, it usually became clear before long that low resolution […]

The U.S. needs new generating capacity in coming decades to meet growing electricity demand. The increasing scarcity of land within utility load centers, combined with environmental opposition to the siting of plants, often limits siting options to remote locations. Restricting power plants to distant sites necessitates additional transmission facilities, increases delivery costs and electric bills, […]

An essential ingredient in the success of any business endeavor is thorough planning. We’ve all heard the axiom "proper prior planning prevents poor performance" or a variation on that theme. Why the need for peak performance? Competition within the industry has never been as intense, with utilities combining in search of economies of scale. The […]

In 1500, Leonardo Da Vinci drew sketches of a device that rotated when hot air going up a chimney passed through a set of fan-like blades. Leonardo called his invention a "chimney jack," and although it only turned a roasting skewer, it gave birth to the idea of mounting blades on a shaft to convert […]

There’s a relatively easy way to make a steam plant more efficient and reliable: keep the tubes of its condenser(s) clean. According to George Saxon, Jr., VP of international sales and marketing for Conco Systems Inc. (Verona, Pa.)—a company whose specialty is cleaning and maintaining condenser tubes—"There are two major problems that result from dirty […]

Remember the slogan, "Never trust anyone over thirty?" Chances are you’ve joined the ranks of the over-thirty generation and are dealing with your own personal "maintenance" issues—not unlike the fleet of generators at larger U.S. power plants, whose average age is about 30. Given the continuing growth in U.S. electricity demand and the cost and […]

Age is wreaking havoc on the U.S. generation industry, especially the coal-fired sector. Industry conferences are replete with hand-wringing over the "brain drain," the lack of skilled personnel, the meager number of students pursuing engineering degrees, and the accelerated retirement of the older workers who make up the industry’s experience base. On top of this, […]

U.S. power producers and owners of industrial steam systems each spend about $15.4 billion annually to combat corrosion in their plants. Scale and deposits are thought to be responsible for another $20 billion a year in reduced plant efficiency and lost generation capacity. Corrosion is the primary cause of every other forced outage, and the […]

  —Dr. Robert Peltier, PE Editor-in-Chief The hot hand in coal-fired power plant development is undoubtedly held by Nevada. In a departure from Sin City’s latest marketing slogan, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," most of the 5,500 MW to be generated by plants proposed for the state is destined for use elsewhere, principally […]

Rotary regenerative air heaters capture and recycle about 60% of the heat energy exiting the boiler—energy that would otherwise go up the stack. For a 500-MW coal-fired plant, the recycled energy amounts to about 1.5 billion Btu per hour, and reusing it reduces fuel consumption by about 1,500 tons per day. Although most performance engineers […]

During the 17 years I’ve lived in Texas, I don’t know that I’ve actually heard anyone say, "Howdy!" but it seemed like the most appropriate word to associate POWER with its new headquarters in Houston. As you may have heard, POWER magazine and related properties were purchased by The TradeFair Group from McGraw-Hill on March […]

T/P92 is being heralded as a superior and lower-cost alternative to T/P91 for new power plants with pressures above 3,600 psi and temperatures above 1,100F—such as the supercritical and ultra-supercritical units proposed to be built in the U.S. over the next few years. The switch from T/P91 to T/P92 would represent the next step in […]

In late February, the largest gas turbine ever manufactured by GE Energy at its Belfort plant in France began a 30-day journey by land and sea that will take it to a new power plant in Spain. The Frame 9FB gas turbine—which is also the first built completely in Belfort—was loaded onto a special, wide-load […]

Steve Elonka began chronicling the exploits of Marmaduke Surfaceblow—a six-foot-four, steel brush-mustached marine engineer with a foghorn voice—in the pages of POWER in 1948. That was the year that Marmy raised the wooden mast of the SS Asia Sun with the aid of two cobras and a case of Sandpaper Gin. This classic episode, written in the late 1960s, shows that even minor consequences of a steam turbine overhaul can cause problems. And as Marmaduke shows, solving any problem requires equal parts judgment, logic, and experience. Enjoy.

Earlier this February, Siemens Power Generation’s (SPG’s) factory in Berlin delivered its 500th gas turbine. The SGT5-4000F (Figure 2), formerly called the V94.3A, is nominally rated at 270 MW and weighs in at about 300 metric tons. With this shipment, the Berlin facility can boast of having built gas turbines with a cumulative capacity of […]

Both the states and the federal government are looking at who should decide which power plants are used at any given moment to meet demand. In question is which approach will reliably serve customers with the lowest-cost electricity. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) raised the issue when it directed the Federal Energy Regulatory […]

Operating a combined-cycle power plant profitably is no walk in the park, even under ideal conditions. But the extreme conditions at the Beluga Power Plant—from isolation to volcanoes—challenge its staff every day in ways that operators in the lower 48 can only imagine.

I couldn’t help but marvel at the synchronicity of two unrelated events over the past few weeks. The first, on January 12, was the rare cancellation of a major military acquisition program with problems called "too expensive to fix." It takes an Act of Congress to kill most military contracts due to the pork flowing […]

Generators and exciters don’t get much respect during scheduled outages. If yours fall into that category, a strategy that includes regular inspections and routine maintenance is all the more important for identifying incipient problems that could bring a plant down. Read on to learn how to keep your generator or exciter from suffering any of the problems shown in the dramatic photos.

Southern California Edison (SCE, Rosemead, Calif.) closed the 1,580-MW coal-fired Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev., on December 31. In a filing with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), SCE said it expects the plant to remain off-line for four years—the time it will take for the utility and the plant’s other owners to battle […]

Global Monitor

Fluor Corp. (Aliso Viejo, Calif.) has finished building and commissioning the 620-MW Jack County power plant (Figure 2) near Jacksboro, Texas, for Waco-based Brazos Electric Cooperative Inc. The natural gas–fired, combined-cycle plant officially came on-line on February 1. 2. Texas 2 x 1 step. The gas-fired, 620-MW, combined-cycle Jack County Generation Plant was built and […]

Global Monitor

The Russian Federation plans to start building a floating nuclear power plant this year. According to the country’s atomic energy agency (Rosatom), the first plant will be small (3 MW) but could lead to the development of offshore plants with capacities of several hundred megawatts. The pioneering plant will be sited off the coast of […]

Global Monitor

A new, mile-long submarine transmission cable in Pearl Harbor (Figure 3, p. 10) will facilitate the U.S. Navy’s plan to renovate and expand historic Ford Island. Honolulu-based Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc. (HECO) recently laid two new 46-kV lines beneath the bridge connecting the island to Oahu. The trickiest part of the installation was avoiding the […]

Global Monitor

One of the distinguishing characteristics of deregulated power markets is variable demand. The ability to operate efficiently at partial loads can determine whether a plant is profitable or not. This need creates special challenges for hydroelectric turbines, because at partial loads they often exhibit strong swirl in the draft tube at the outlet of the […]

Global Monitor

The Combined Cycle Users’ Group (CCUG) was formed to address issues of importance to users, particularly the interactions among the major systems of combined-cycle power plants: the steam turbine, combustion turbine(s), and heat-recovery steam generator. The added value of becoming a CCUG member is the opportunity to interact with other operators, as well as designers, […]