POWER

In his keynote speech this May to the Global Roundtable on Climate Change, held in Iceland and hosted by the Earth Institute of Columbia University, Ólafur Ragnar Grimsson—the president of Iceland—challenged government and business leaders to take measurable steps now to build a prosperous and sustainable future through smart science and public policy. Grimsson’s call […]

The visible consequences of sulfuric acid aerosol emissions—opaque stack emissions called “blue plumes”—are merely the tip of an iceberg. In sufficient concentration, SO3 also can increase corrosion and fouling of equipment and components downstream of the furnace while decreasing their efficiency and penalizing overall plant heat rate.

The length of term allowed for power sales contracts is a critical determinant of the ability of states to meet their increasingly ambitious renewable power targets. Many utilities advocate limiting terms to 10 or perhaps 15 years for renewable energy contracts, emphasizing the "flexibility" that shorter terms offer. In contrast, contract terms of 20 or […]

It’s said that pioneers take the arrows. In the case of Springerville Unit 3—a 418-MW (net) expansion of a Tucson Electric Power facility in Arizona and the first pulverized coal–fired unit built in the U.S. in more than a decade—the arrows were many. Although Tri-State (the developer), Tucson Electric (the host), and Bechtel Power (the EPC contractor) were wounded by delayed deliveries of major equipment, bankruptcy of a major supplier, and a labor shortage, the companies showed their pioneering spirit and completed the project ahead of schedule. For ushering in a new generation of clean and desperately needed baseload capacity, Springerville Unit 3 is POWER magazine’s 2006 Plant of the Year.

Point Aconi’s circulating fluidized-bed boiler experienced erosion, corrosion, and fouling problems from the day it went on-line in 1993. After several frustrating years of unreliable operation, in late 1999, Nova Scotia Power discovered the right combination of engineering and fuel modifications. Today, after a switch to 80% petroleum coke and major boiler modifications, Point Aconi’s output exceeds its original nameplate rating. For having the vision and fortitude to plan and execute a multiyear, $20 million project to revitalize North America’s first in-service utility CFB boiler, Nova Scotia Power’s Point Aconi plant is the well-deserved winner of POWER magazine’s 2006 Marmaduke Award for excellence in O&M.

Among utility chemists, opinions differ on the effect that organic compounds—both naturally occurring types and those added as treatment chemicals—have on the steam cycle. Some chemists raise the specter of corrosion of low-pressure turbines caused by organic acids created as the compounds degrade. Others defend and encourage the use of organic treatment chemicals, particularly neutralizing amines, by pointing to a long and positive history of their use in boiler and feedwater systems.

Performance testing after initial start-up has value well beyond the short-term goal of validating equipment guarantees—it’s your only opportunity to establish the baseline performance of the overall plant and many of its major systems. Corporate bean counters may be interested in short-term results, but a good plant engineer understands that a thorough performance test will be useful for many years. Here’s your guide to each facet of a performance test—plus pitfalls to avoid.

Complying with permitted emissions limits may be the most significant operations risk for a power plant. As limits are slowly ratcheted downward, understanding the accuracy and variation of measured pollutant levels becomes even more important. To avoid misunderstandings, regulators and plant owners should factor measurement uncertainty into air quality permit numbers both as the permit is formulated and preceding any subsequent modifications.

An extremely reliable North American bulk power system—one that consistently delivers uninterrupted power to every user—is not a dream that must be made reality. To a large extent, that is what we have today. With the exception of infrequent (and therefore, newsworthy) outages, the system has never been more dependable. Nevertheless, with the great northeast blackout of August 14, 2003, still fresh in memory, Congress saw fit to include electric reliability measures in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Stainless steels and nickel alloys of the C-family are major materials of construction for flue gas desulfurization systems. Both types of materials depend upon the presence of thin, passive, chromium-rich, surface-oxide films to provide the desired corrosion resistance. Corrosion resistance is optimized by proper cleaning before and after fabrication. Here are some guidelines for keeping those materials clean.

Steve Elonka began chronicling the exploits of Marmaduke Surfaceblow—a six-foot-four marine engineer with a steel brush mustache and a foghorn voice—in POWER in 1948, when Marmy raised the wooden mast of the SS Asia Sun with the help of two cobras and a case of Sandpaper Gin. Marmy’s simple solutions to seemingly intractable plant problems remain timeless.

The overriding environmental challenge of our time is climate change. The problem originates from the emission of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, mainly from the transport and energy sectors. If humanity fails to come to terms with this problem, we will be forced to make dramatic changes in the way we live our lives, but […]

—Dr. Robert Peltier, PE Editor-in-Chief During every summer hot enough to break peak demand records, the rhetoric heats up as well, with calls to rid the U.S. bulk-power system of bottlenecks. As the eternal optimist, I see large transmission projects showing signs of life and grid reliability improving. But not everyone is happy about that. […]

Demand records fall nationwide;
GE’s ABWR to be STP’s edge; Entergy buys Palisades plant; Dithering over desert disposal; Tourist trash-to-energy plant;
Brooklyn says "Yo!" to microturbines; POWER digest

Level measurement in harsh environment;

Designing insulation for structures;

Shockingly clean boiler

A great location, a fish-friendly cooling system, and the extent of environmental remediation needed to permit it distinguish this repowering project on the Hudson River just south of the New York State capital.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard Cogeneration facility supplies critical electricity and steam to New York City. Situated on an historic site, the plant has earned a series of awards and was the first cogeneration plant to be accepted into both the U.S. EPA National Environmental Performance Track and OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program in 2005. Through Delta Power’s unique asset management approach that brings added value to projects, BNYC has reinvented itself from a struggling, prematurely aging facility into one of the nation’s leading plants.

Commercial operation of PacifiCorp’s first new power plant in more than 20 years coincided with the company’s acquisition by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company this past March. Currant Creek treads lightly on the environment, provides needed power to PacifiCorp’s eastern control area, and has demonstrated its commitment to be a good corporate citizen of the local community. By any account, Currant Creek is a model for how to develop a power project.

With the commercial debut of the first of six planned 470-MW turbines in December 2005, the time has come to pay homage to the sheer size (2,820 MW) and longevity (13 years and counting) of TEPCO’s Kannagawa Hydropower Plant. By the time Unit 2 is commissioned in 2010, and Units 3 through 6 go on-line "in and after 2016," two generations of engineers, technicians, and builders will have worked on the "pure" pumped-storage project since its inception. As if those stats weren’t impressive enough, Kannagawa marks the debut of "splitter runners" for pump-turbines. They increase the effective head of the plant to the highest in the world: 2,142 feet, at a flow of 135,000 gallons/second. That’s a very large pump-turbine, indeed.

It would be easy to dismiss Linden—which is powered by now-ubiquitous GE 7FA gas turbines and D11 steam turbines—as just another cookie-cutter combined-cycle plant. But its size (1,240 MW), key location near New York City, and use of reclaimed water for all cooling water needs makes Linden deserving of recognition as one of POWER’s Top Plants of 2006. Perhaps its most interesting story is how the project survived more than five years from groundbreaking to commissioning.

Why does Monticello, a 30-year-old plant, deserve recognition as one of POWER’s Top Plants of 2006? Because TXU has been blending Powder River Basin (PRB) coal with local lignite at the plant for the past decade, and steady reductions in air-pollutant emission rates have been the result. That positive experience has made the company confident enough to propose building nearly 9,100 MW of new coal- or lignite-fired capacity in Texas by 2010 at a cost of $10 billion. Read on to share some of the lessons that TXU has learned about handling PRB coal safely.

  Learning theorists tell us that one of the key reasons we don’t learn from our mistakes is that we don’t or won’t recognize them as such. We attribute good outcomes to our skill and intelligence and blame bad ones on others or on just plain bad luck. This unhealthy mind-set can be tolerated for […]

Southern California Edison and Bechtel resurrected the 1,054-MW Mountainview power project after a two-year hiatus while meeting aggressive budget and schedule constraints. Edison exercised its option to purchase the project after regulatory approvals were received at light speed, and construction resumed the very day approval was granted. Residents of California’s Inland Empire will enjoy their air conditioners this summer because Mountainview was transformed from a wasteland into a productive plant.

Russia’s new nuclear navy;Russia’s old nuclear navy; First LMS100 fired up by Basin Electric;More Jenbacher gensets to Hungary; A baseload-size wind farm?; EEI bestows Edison Awards; POWERnotes
 

New York City has an insatiable appetite for power, but supplying that power from plants inside the city’s five boroughs (where 80% of its peak demand must come from) is tough. So it’s nothing short of miraculous that a 500-MW combined-cycle plant in Astoria, Queens, began commercial operation at the end of 2005. What did it take to bring this plant on-line? The largest state-owned power organization in the U.S.—The New York Power Authority.

The latest benchmarking study by the EUCG examines the engineering and technical staffing of 62 plants, 92% of which burn coal. If you benchmark your units, plants, or fleet, the results may raise some eyebrows. But they also may help justify your plea for more intellectual capital during the upcoming budgeting cycle. Though the detailed results of the study are proprietary to EUCG member companies that participated in it, POWER was given access to the complete findings. If you want details at the plant/unit level, you’ll have to join the EUCG and participate in the study, which is ongoing.

We tend to forget that today’s super-sized power plant designs began life as small prototypes that grew in size only as fast as technology and economics allowed. Arizona Public Service, a long-time leader in solar energy development, has invested in the development of one such technology that is compatible with the sunny Southwest and certain to become more cost-competitive in the near future. This successful demonstration of a 1-MW concentrated solar power, trough-style energy system is the first to have put power on the grid since 1988. But it certainly won’t be the last.

This year’s main course, as usual, was instrumentation and controls. Side dishes of digital nuclear plant controls, plant controller and IT security, corrosion monitoring, and model predictive control added their own distinctive flavors. There was something for every taste, from the theoretical to the practical.

Beer drinkers know and love Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s dedication to bottling premium beers, and that commitment has earned it numerous tasting awards. But it would also win awards on the basis of using clean, high-tech brewing technologies. Sierra Nevada has chosen to minimize its environment footprint by investing in a reuse/reduce/recycle beer-making process. The company has found a way to make its "closed-cycle brewery" a good corporate citizen without compromising bottom-line results.

Cape Wind’s economics questioned The cited study concludes that the Cape Wind Project will "receive a 25% return on equity, 2.5 times the historical average for all corporations" when the present value of federal production tax credits, Massachusetts green credits, and accelerated depreciation for tax purposes are included. Our elected officials passed these laws, and […]