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Environmental Protection Agency

Orchestrating Outages

IT systems ease the pain of power plant restarts.
Scott M. Gawlicki, Public Utilities Fortnightly
Squeezing plant outage duration by days or even weeks can save the industry billions of dollars in lost running time. The San Onofre outage is just the most visible example of what's at stake for the industry. New outage management technologies and processes allow generators to coordinate outages and get critical plants back online quickly and efficiently.
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Multi-pollutant Emissions Control

Byline: 

Kevin Crapsey

Magazine Volume: 
Fortnightly Magazine - December 2012

Conflicting demands for complying with EPA’s MATS rule favor a single control technology to deal with multiple types of power plant emissions.

Category: 
Technology Corridor
Author Bio: 

Kevin Crapsey is vice president of corporate strategy and development at Eco Power Solutions.

Category (Actual): 
Permitting
Environmental
Coal

MATS compliance now, with flexibility for the future.

Maximum Burden

Byline: 

Roger H. Bezdek

Magazine Volume: 
Fortnightly Magazine - December 2012

Although EPA claims its tough new clean air regulations will improve public health, in fact they’ll measurably degrade the health of Florida seniors.

Image: 
Figure 1 - Florida Residents 65 years or Older
Figure 2 - Utility MACT and Florida Elders
Category: 
Op Ed
Author Bio: 

Roger H. Bezdek (rbezdek@misi-net.com) is president of Management Information Services Inc. He’s authored several articles for Fortnightly since 1996, most recently “Energy Subsidy Myths and Realities,” June 2012.

Category (Actual): 
Pricing
Environmental

The electricity price increases from the proposed EPA Utility MACT will act as a regressive tax on the elderly.

Least-Risk Planning

Byline: 

Kenneth Colburn, et al.

Magazine Volume: 
Fortnightly Magazine - November 2012

The D.C. Circuit’s CSAPR ruling reinforces the benefits of planning ahead and keeping options open. A diverse portfolio strategy reduces risks and costs.

Author Bio: 

Ken Colburn (kcolburn@raponline.org) and David Farnsworth are senior associates at the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP). John Shenot is an associate, Camille Kadoch is a research and policy analyst, Elizabeth Watson is energy and environment fellow, and Rebecca Wigg is a communications associate at RAP.

Category (Actual): 
Environmental
Coal
Permitting

The Homer City decision increases uncertainty—but rewards forward thinking.

Federal Feud

Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford and Michael T. Burr

Magazine Volume: 
Fortnightly Magazine - November 2012

When Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led an attack on the federal Springfield Armory in January 1787—the spark that ignited the federalist movement—he scarcely could’ve guessed that now, 225 years later, his spiritual descendants would still be fighting that very same battle.

Author Bio: 

Bruce W. Radford (radford@pur.com) is Fortnightly’s publisher, and Michael T. Burr (burr@pur.com) is the editor-in-chief.

Category (Actual): 
The States
The Feds
Environmental

The jurisdictional battle rages on, with FERC and EPA squaring off against the states.

Efficiency Beyond the Low Fruit

Byline: 

Hossein Haeri, Heidi Ochsner and Jim Stewart

Magazine Volume: 
Fortnightly Magazine - October 2012

As efficiency programs mature, utilities and regulators will be challenged to keep producing demand-side resources. A systems-oriented approach can yield cost-effective results.

Author Bio: 

Hossein Haeri, Ph.D., is an executive director, Heidi Ochsner an associate and Jim Stewart, Ph.D., a senior associate at The Cadmus Group, Inc.

Category (Actual): 
DR & Conservation
Retail Markets
Commercial & Industrial

Continuous improvement requires changing practices and cultural norms.

Orchestrating Outages

Byline: 

Scott M. Gawlicki

Magazine Volume: 
Fortnightly Magazine - July 2012

Squeezing plant outage duration by days or even weeks can save the industry billions of dollars in lost running time. The San Onofre outage is just the most visible example of what’s at stake for the industry. New outage management technologies and processes allow generators to coordinate outages and get critical plants back online quickly and efficiently.

Category: 
Technology Corridor
Sidebar: 
Sidebar Title: 
Call of Duty: The Outage
Sidebar Body: 

According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 72 percent of American households play computer or video games. Who cares?

Invensys does.

The company’s EYESIM virtual reality software allows goggle-wearing users to walk through a virtual power plant environment—like they might with a first-person video game. As a training system, it can be used to address virtually any outage scenario. It’s currently supporting an IGCC plant training demonstration program at the National Energy Technology Lab’s AVESTAR Center.

“We see this being used for outage planning,” says Peter Richmond, product manager with Invensys. “With a full 3-D view of the plant, planners will be able to visualize where the equipment is, where to place the scaffolding, where to place outage equipment, and even use it to determine the order in which the work will be performed.”

Further, as the ESA numbers clearly indicate, Invensys believes the next generation power plant workers will be familiar with video technology and consequently will embrace it over traditional training techniques. As such, Invensys is marketing its program for a variety of training purposes, including shut down and start up processes prior to an actual outage.

“A planned shut down and start-up doesn’t occur that often and plant personnel don’t usually get to practice the steps very often,” he says.

It’s a manual process—adjusting valves and controls. If you get it wrong, things can blow up.

“Our system will allow plant personnel to practice in a virtual environment,” Richmond says. “If they make a mistake, the system will tell them what could conceivably happen.”–SMG

Sidebar Title: 
Got Boilermakers?
Sidebar Body: 

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last December that it had finalized its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, or MATS, it predicted thousands of American workers would be needed to build, install, and operate new power plant equipment to reduce emissions of mercury, acid gases, and other air pollutants.

With roughly four years to comply with the mandate, many within the electric power industry have predicted labor shortages, especially on the power plant installation and construction end of the equation. But as far as the Kansas City, Kansas-based International Brotherhood of Boilermakers is concerned, those fears are unfounded.

Some 10 years ago, when many in the industry were predicting a spike in coal-fired power plant construction, the union began gearing up its apprenticeship and recruitment programs in anticipation of the building boom. At that time it was predicted that enough Boilermakers would be needed to handle 50 million man-hours of construction work by 2010.

But the boom was a dud. Plans for roughly 100 new coal-fired generation units were scrapped. As a result, boilermaker man-hours peaked at 41 million in 2008, with about 31,000 members actively working, and man-hours have been in sharp decline ever since. Boilermakers worked 34 million man-hours in 2009, 29 million man-hours in 2010, and 27 million man-hours in 2011. About 25 million man-hours are projected for 2012.

According to Kyle Evenson, the union’s executive director of construction sector operations, some boilermakers decided to retire or seek other occupations during the industry downturn. “But the average $58 an hour in pay and benefits will bring them back. As the industry recovers, we will meet the needs of the contractors and owners with our apprenticeship and recruiting training programs,” he says.

In the meantime, the workforce should be ample for the expected project demand. “I recently had a guy doing research for a think tank ask, ‘What if 10 power plants all schedule new baghouse equipment installations at the same time?’ I told him that’s roughly 2,000 boilermakers and we have about three times that number right now who are either underemployed or unemployed.”–SMG

Sidebar Title: 
Got Boilermakers?
Sidebar Body: 

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last December that it had finalized its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), it predicted thousands of American workers would be needed to build, install, and operate new power plant equipment to reduce emissions of mercury, acid gases, and other air pollutants.

With roughly four years to comply with the mandate, many within the electric power industry have predicted labor shortages, especially on the power plant installation and construction end of the equation. But as far as the Kansas City, Kansas-based International Brotherhood of Boilermakers is concerned, those fears are unfounded.

Some 10 years ago, when many in the industry were predicting a spike in coal-fired power plant construction, the union began gearing up its apprenticeship and recruitment programs in anticipation of the building boom. At that time it was predicted that enough boilermakers would be needed to handle 50 million man-hours of construction work by 2010.

But the boom was a dud. Plans for roughly 100 new coal-fired generation units were scrapped. As a result, boilermaker man-hours peaked at 41 million in 2008, with about 31,000 members actively working, and man-hours have been in sharp decline ever since. Boilermakers worked 34 million man-hours in 2009, 29 million man-hours in 2010, and 27 million man-hours in 2011. About 25 million man-hours are projected for 2012.

According to Kyle Evenson, the union's executive director of construction sector programs, some boilermakers decided to retire or seek other occupations during the industry's downturn. "But the average $58 an hour in pay and benefits will bring them back," he says. "As the industry recovers, we will meet the needs of the contractors and owners with our apprenticeship, recruiting, and training programs."

In the meantime, the workforce should be ample for the expected project demand. "I recently had a guy doing research for a think tank ask, 'What if 10 power plants all schedule new baghouse equipment instllations at the same time?' I told him that's roughly 2,000 boilermakers, and we have about three times that number right now who are either underemployed or unemployed."-SMG

Author Bio: 

Scott M. Gawlicki is Fortnightly’s contributing editor based in Hartford, Conn.

Category (Actual): 
Cybersecurity, Reliability & CIP
Coal

IT systems ease the pain of power plant restarts.

Regulatory Gordian Knot

Byline: 

Miranda Yost

Magazine Volume: 
Fortnightly Magazine - July 2012

New environmental requirements under the Clean Water Act (CWA) will add to the already complex burden of compliance for power plants. As the Environmental Protection Agency moves forward with cooling water and effluent standards, utilities and generators will have to deal with overlapping rules and conflicting policy goals.

Image: 
Author Bio: 

Miranda Yost is an attorney in Hunton & Williams LLP’s Richmond office. Her practice focuses on environmental law and regulation.

Category (Actual): 
Environmental
Energy Policy & Legislation

EPA’s new water, waste, and air regulations complicate power plant compliance.