Instrumentation & Controls

The dearth of commercial operating experience for advanced coal-fired facilities is forcing their early adopters and builders to use long development cycles and pay high costs for unique engineering design studies. A broad-based industry collaborative effort fostered by EPRI to address this issue is beginning to show results.

All fossil fuels carry some risk with their reward of an energy density that’s sufficient for producing electricity economically. For coal and natural gas, that threat is a fire or explosion. However, the risk of an explosion isn’t limited to gas-fired plants. Gas poses a threat to any plant that uses the fuel, even in small quantities for heating. Here’s an overview of what you should be doing to keep gas pipelines from corroding and exploding.

Last year, San Diego Gas & Electric tapped Boston-based EnerNOC Inc. to aggregate 25 MW of backup generators throughout SDG&E’s service area to relieve the grid when it’s stressed by peak demand for electricity. By combining stringent environmental controls with field-proven expertise managing distributed assets, EnerNOC has helped to improve grid stability in Southern California.

Single-window control of CHP plant’s energy converters / Safety stuffers entertain as they inform / Doubling up for a heavy load

The NERC auditors are coming / Winning encore for on-line pH monitoring / Using baloons as temporary barriers / How data logging can cut power bills

To make the most of their digital devices and enable the sharing of data by different departments, new and old plants alike need a reliable digital data infrastructure.

Over the past few years, U.S. nuclear power plants have begun replacing their obsolete analog control systems with digital control systems. Many of these projects have been completed successfully, yielding a tidy return on investment in the form of increased generation. However, some have encountered difficulties, which resulted in cost overruns and schedule delays. This minority of projects may have eroded the industry’s confidence in digital upgrade projects, but a well-run project is still one of your best options for squeezing the last drop of performance out of your plant.

How do you know if a pressure transmitter is giving poor results? Unless the transmitter actually fails, most operators won’t notice a very slow loss in accuracy or response time. Fortunately, the noise analysis technique can identify such changes before they cause a problem. The technique has been used to effectively measure the dynamic response of nuclear power plant pressure sensors and their associated sensing lines. It also can be applied to any plant that relies on accurate instrumentation for control and monitoring plant performance.

Air and steam sootblowers have been the power industry’s solution to the slagging and fouling of boiler convective passes caused by flyash and combustion products. Manual cleaning systems have been superseded by computers and neural nets, but the basic cleaning apparatus remained unchanged—until now. Say hello to detonation waves. They can knock those deposits loose while markedly improving boiler heat transfer efficiency.

Tubing manufacturers have many alternatives for manufacturing and testing stainless steel tubing for feedwater heater and condenser applications. ASTM specifications are fairly generic in nature and only specify the minimum tube design and testing requirements—which may not be sufficient to provide the appropriate quality for a critical power plant application. To make the right material selections, it’s helpful to understand how welded stainless steel tubing is manufactured and its quality is checked.