September 2014

September 2014 Vol. 158 No.
Vol. 158 No. 9 September 2014
Gas Top Plant

Award Winners
Boiler Chemical Cleaning Best

Practices
316(b): The Opportunity of
Social Costs
Designing Collector Pipes for
Condensate Return Lines
Geothermal Update
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CIRCLE 1 ON READER SERVICE CARD
Established 1882 Vol. 158 No. 9
September 2014
ON THE COVER
Our cover shot shows the assembly of a Siemens SGT6-8000H gas turbine, which is used
in the award-winning Andong Combined Cycle Plant in South Korea. Courtesy: Siemens
Energy
COVER STORY: GAS TOP PLANTS

24 Andong Combined Cycle Power Plant, Andong, South Korea
South Korea is in the midst of a massive push toward generation capacity additions,
and this plant is one of four combined cycle power plants scheduled to come online
through next year that will use the Siemens H-class turbine pictured on the cover.
26 CPV Sentinel Energy Project, Desert Hot Springs, California

Where theres lots of wind, theres need for fast-response backup capacity. For this
Southern California gas plant, several site factors helped ensure success in that role.
24
30 Jingqiao Power Plant, Beijing, China

This combined heat and power plant, one of the largest in the world, is among Chinas latest additions to a cleaner, distributed generation fleetfactors of critical importance in urban centers concerned about air pollution.
32 New York University Cogeneration Plant, New York City

This campus combined heat and power plant has proven that it delivers more than
reliable, low-cost, low-emissions electricity, heating, and cooling. While operating in
island mode, this microgrid also provided an oasis during an emergency.
34 Quisqueya I & II, San Pedro de Macors, Dominican Republic

Sometimes it takes an atypical partnership to ensure success for both partners. The
development partnership for this plant resulted in a project boasting multiple superlatives for owners plus wins for the countrys customers.
38 Ulsan 4 Combined Cycle Power Plant, Ulsan Metropolitan City, South Korea
Neither speed nor safety was compromised in the development of this fast-track
project. Swift government approvals and a two-phase construction plan helped this
plant deliver desperately needed power ahead of schedule.
SPECIAL REPORT: WATER
26
40 Boiler Chemical Cleaning: Doing It Correctly

Boiler cleaning must be done, so you might as well do it well to achieve best results.
Heres your guide to determining when to schedule the task, the pros and cons of
solvents, choosing a service company, process planning, and waste management.
48 EPAs New 316(b) Rule and the Opportunity of Social Costs

For the first time with a U.S. federal environmental regulation, the social costs of
compliance must be factored in to technology choices regarding cooling water intake structures at existing facilities. Our exclusive primer explains what that means
and how it can be advantageous.
Connect with POWER

If you like POWER magazine, follow us online for timely industry news and comments.
Become our fan at facebook.com/POWERmagazine
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Join the LinkedIn POWER magazine and Women in Power Generation Groups
September 2014 POWER
www.powermag.com
34
1
FEATURES
GAS POWER
56 Reciprocating Engines Expand Roles

Think you know recip engines? Think again. These familiar workhorses are becoming thoroughbreds of the flexible generation fleet, and the technology innovations
keep on coming.
PLANT DESIGN
62 How to Design the Collector Pipe for Condensate Return Lines

Like Goldilocks and her porridge, you should design collector pipes to be not too
large, not too small, but just right. Here are the calculations youll need to achieve
perfection.
18
RENEWABLES
66 Whats Needed to Address U.S. Geothermals Deep-Seated Challenges?

Geothermal energy has a lot going for it: Its baseload renewable, the resource is
available around the world, and the plants are relatively low maintenance. So why
is the U.S. losing ground in developing this valuable resource?
DEPARTMENTS
SPEAKING OF POWER
6 POWER for All

GLOBAL MONITOR
56
8
8
8
12
14
14
15
16
Australia Kills Carbon Price, Faces Murky Carbon Future

Above-Average Growth Reported for Nuclear, Renewables in 2013
Hong Kong Mulls How to Best Replace Coal Power
THE BIG PICTURE: The Natural Gas Trade
Commercial-Scale Carbon Capture Project Starts Construction in Texas
A Nuclear Status and Trend Overview
China Commissions 13.9-GW Hydropower Project
POWER Digest
FOCUS ON O&M
18 New Disaster Preparedness Approaches for Nuclear Plants

19 Digital Writing Solution Allows Timely Updates to Drawings and Field Reports
LEGAL & REGULATORY
22 What Went Wrong with SMRs?

By Thomas W. Overton, JD
COMMENTARY
76 The Northeasts Natural Gas Challenge

By David T. Doot, Joseph H. Fagan, and Sebastian M. Lombardi, Day Pitney
More September Issue Stories at powermag.com
66
2
How to Use Honeypots to Overcome Cybersecurity Shortcomings

10 Energy Takeaways from the U.S.-Africa Summit
Plus, news stories posted throughout the week!
www.powermag.com
POWER September 2014
One of the largest turbines on earth.

One of the smallest impacts on earth.
The SGT6-8000H is both powerful and efficient, using less fuel with
lower emissions for a very sustainable future.
Siemens SGT-8000H series gas turbines are capable

of performing at efficiency levels of more than 60
percent. That means a 85,000-ton reduction in CO2
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the most powerful commercially operating gas
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helping to save our environment.
siemens.com/energy
EDITORIAL & PRODUCTION

Editor: Dr. Gail Reitenbach
editor@powermag.com
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Associate Editor: Thomas Overton, JD
Associate Editor: Sonal Patel
Associate Editor: Aaron Larson
Contributing Editors: Brandon Bell, PE; Charles Butcher; David Daniels, PE;
Steven F. Greenwald; Jeffrey P. Gray; Jim Hylko; Kennedy Maize;
Dick Storm, PE
Senior Graphic Designer: Michele White
Production Manager: Tony Campana, tcampana@accessintel.com
GENERATING COMPANY ADVISORY TEAM

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SPEAKING OF POWER
POWER for All

o, this isnt a column about the value of providing electricity to everyone everywhere (though that is a
worthy goal toward which several nations
and nonprofits are working). Its about
why we write and publish this magazine,
and for whom.
When I read email sent to our editorial staff and talk with readers at industry
events, Im struck by the wonderful diversity of our community. Our audience in print,
online, and on social media is very international. Formal education ranges from less
than a high school diploma to PhDs. Job
titles are even more varied, especially as
our readers include not just those who own,
operate, and service power plants but also
folks in the regulatory, financial, legal, and
broader business community.
Im also amazed by what kind of magazine different readers think this is. Some
refer to POWER as a technical journal;
many read it for our coverage of industry
trends. One fellow I met this spring even
mentioned that he enjoys the adsbecause they, too, indicate where companies
serving this industry are focused. In some
ways, these different types of readers
see POWER differently. So whos right?
Everyoneto a degree.
A Powerful Mission
Our tagline, Business and technology
for the global generation industry, is
ambitiouscovering the most important
developments around the world is a challenge in the pages of a monthly magazine
(even when you add our more-frequent
digital content).
Despite its well-deserved reputation for
including a regular serving of technical articles that appeal to engineers and other
plant personnel, POWER never has been
a technical journal. Originally founded
by advertising salesmen, POWERunlike
peer-reviewed academic journals, with
their footnotes and reference lists (and
high subscription costs)hews to the
magazine end of the periodical spectrum. Even in detail-rich articles, we aim
to make the presentation of technical information as accessible as possible to both
plant people and office peoplethose
6
who may need to understand the basics

of new technologies and practices in order
to make operational or investment decisions. Though the magazines coverage
has evolved over time as the industry has
become more diverse and complex, even
issues of POWER published 100 years ago
included everything from engineering articles to coverage of regulatory and association developments to new product pitches
to personnel management tips.
POWER began as, and remains, what is
known as a business-to-business brand.
Through print, online, social media, and
webinar content, we provide a place for
power generators and the companies that
provide equipment and services to them
to learn about and talk to each other.
We try to be the one must-read title for
anyone involved in the industry. We dont
expect all readers to read all stories, but
since we know you cant read every niche
publication, academic paper, blog, and enewsletter, we aim to bring you the essentialsas well as a few surprises.
POWER for All Generating

Technologies
One thing POWER is not is a lobbying
voice for any particular fuel, technology,
or policy. (Thats sure to annoy those who
wish wed support coal or nuclear or renewables or gas.) Although editors and
contributors examine specific options and
developments in both commentaries and
state-of-the-technology pieces (and may,
on occasion, make a passionate case for a
particular fuel or policy), POWER continues to serve the entire power generation
industry. Regardless of what policies are
enacted in the U.S. and abroad, who is
currently in office, and which fuel or technology has the economic and operational
edge in a particular locale, well be covering what you need to know to thrive in
this industry.
Though subscribers involved with nuclear plants are unlikely to read articles
about coal combustion, those involved
with all fuels should find something useful in a wide range of POWER articles
from those covering legal and regulatory
developments to those introducing new
www.powermag.com
and emerging technologies or examining

how energy policy and generation projects
are evolving in other parts of the world.
Such pieces have something of value for
everyone.
POWER for All Generations

POWER has always been on the forefront
of industry trend coverage, whether thats
boiler safety, nuclear power developments,
combined cycles, or now, cybersecurity,
distributed generation, and new environmental issues. Of course, the old issues
dont go away, even though the details
and operating contexts change.
And just as we cover all generation
technologies, we aim to address the needs
and wants of all generations of readers,
from students to retirees. Many of you still
insist on a print magazine (which we are
happy to provide), but as more of our audience moves to online and mobile technology, we continue to enhance our content
on digital platforms as well. After all, just
as the digital nativesthe much-needed younger workers in this sectorare
more likely to be enthralled by virtual reality apps than analog dials, theyre more
likely to rely on digital resources than
their mentors do. Another move in that
direction: Along with most other media
companies, we no longer print letters to
the editor; instead, youll find comments
on individual stories online at the bottom
of the story page.
Celebrating Generation Leaders
Some of our most popular articles over the
years have been plant profiles, and with
this issue we begin our annual coverage
of Top Plant Award winners from the gas,
coal, nuclear, and renewable sectors. As
in years past, youll find more winning
projects in some categories than others,
depending on the number of interesting
projects that were nominated and discovered by POWER editors. Theres only one
way to ensure we dont miss a stellar project next year: Nominate it! Forms for 2015
award nominations can be found online at
powermag.com/power-awards.
Gail Reitenbach, PhD is POWERs
editor (@GailReit, @POWERmagazine).
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Copyright 2014 Exxon Mobil Corporation. All rights reserved.

All trademarks used herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Exxon Mobil Corporation or one of its subsidiaries unless otherwise noted.
Australia Kills Carbon

Price, Faces Murky Carbon
Future
Australia in July became the first nation
to abolish a price on carbon, after the
Senate passed the Abbott governments
repeal bills by a vote of 3932. Yet the
countrys carbon conundrum continues
because Prime Minister Tony Abbott must
still get his Direct Action Plan, a proposed
replacement for the countrys emissions
trading scheme, to pass the Senate.
Abbott, the Liberal Partys leader, campaigned and won the September 2013
prime ministerial election on the platform
that he would scrap the punitive carbon
levy. But his victory this July didnt come
without a fight from the Labor and Greens
parties in the Senate.
Opponents now argue that the coalrich country is effectively in a carbon
coma. It no longer has a hard cap on carbon emissions; it is no longer required to
achieve its long-term emissions reduction
target of 80% by 2050; and, more troubling according to some, is that the repeal bills also call for the abolition of the
profit-making Clean Energy Finance Corporation as well as the Australian Renewable
Energy Agency.
Abbotts Direct Action Plan instead
proposes to curb Australias carbon emissions by 5%, based on 2000 emissions,
by 2020. As described in the government
documentswhich acknowledge the science of climate changethe centerpiece
of that plan is the $2.5 billion Emissions
Reduction Fund (ERF), a pool of capital
to support direct action by industry to
reduce emissions. According to a white
paper setting out the final design of the
ERF released on April 24, the government
will use the fund to purchase lowest-cost
abatement (in the form of Australian carbon credit units) from a wide range of
sources across the economy. It will then
provide incentives for carbon emitters to
take action to reduce their emissions.
A bill to implement the ERF passed the
House of Representative on June 25, but
it now faces a standoff in the Senate,
which is controlled by the Labor, Greens,
independents, and several smaller parties.
The carbon tax repeal only passed after
the Abbott government spent two weeks
wrangling with unpredictable crossbenchers, or independents. Bill Shorten, who
has led the Labor Party as well as the opposition since October 2013, in July called
8
the Direct Action Plan a boondoggle, an

inefficient mechanism where you pay wads
of taxpayer money to big polluters for little likely result.
But the Business Council of Australia,
the Australian Industry Group, and the
Minerals Council of Australia have backed
Abbotts plan, urging the Senate not to
delay its passage.
Power generators, which had cited the
carbon tax for past retail power price
increases, neither publically hailed the
carbon prices repeal nor bemoaned it.
Removal of the carbon price in wholesale
markets would not be simple, announced
the Energy Supply Association of Australia
in July: It will vary depending on the different types of financial contracts. And
it added: How much a retailer changes
its prices will be determined by its change
in costs, as well as the competitive landscape. How fast it can change its prices
depends on a number of factors.
For an in-depth look at resource-rich
Australias generation troubles in the context of its contentious carbon policy fight,
see Australias Carbon Policy Predicament, in POWERs April 2014 issue.
Above-Average Growth
Reported for Nuclear,
Renewables in 2013
Despite stagnant economic growth globally, primary energy consumption surged
in 2013, with growth for nuclear power
and renewables in power generation expanding at above-average rates, BP said
in its recently released Statistical Review
of World Energy 2014.
According to the report, world power
generation grew 2.5% in 2013, slightly up
over 2012 (which saw 2.2% growth over
2011) but below the 10-year trend (3.3%).
And while electricity generation fell for the
1. A generation change. Power generation (in TWh) has surged over the last two
decades in Asia. Source: BP Statistical Review
of World Energy 2014
Africa Asia Pacific Europe and Eurasia
Middle East North America South and
Central America
2003
2008
2013
World
16,787 TWh
World
20,277 TWh
World
23,126 TWh
www.powermag.com
third year in a row in member countries of

the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD), it surged 4.8% in
non-OECD countries. China, followed by the
U.S., was the worlds largest power generator (Figure 1). Meanwhile, India overtook
Japan to take third place.
Globally, coal consumption grew 3%
in 2013below the 10-year average of
3.9%but coal is still the fastest-growing
fossil fuel, the report suggested. Growth
was particularly marked by increased
consumption in Asia. Even though China
recorded the weakest absolute growth
since 2008, that country still accounted
for 67% of coals global growth, with India
accounting for 21%.
Nuclear saw its first increase since
2010, climbing 0.9%. Nuclear consumption grew in the U.S., China, and Canada,
but was offset by declines in South Korea,
Ukraine, Spain, Russia, and Japanwhose
nuclear output has fallen 95% since 2010
with nearly all of its reactors still offline
after the Fukushima disaster.
Renewables generation, on the other
hand, soared 16.3% and accounted for a
record 5.3% share of global power generation, said the report. Globally, wind energy (up 20.7%) again accounted for more
than half of renewable power generation
growth, and solar power generation grew
even more rapidly (33%).
Natural gas consumption also grew in
2013, although below the historical average, with consumption lax in every region
except North America.
Hong Kong Mulls How to

Best Replace Coal Power
Since March, Hong Kong has been contemplating two options as it prepares to phase
out its coal-fired power plantswhich currently produce more than half of its electricityto improve an enduring local and
regional air quality and visibility crisis. One
option calls for buying more power from
coal-heavy mainland China, and the other
is to increase self-sufficiency by increasing
local power production from natural gas. A
decision is to be made later this year.
The two options, proposed by the Hong
Kong governments Environment Bureau,
have been touted as the most achievable
means to meet the Special Administrative
Regions projected electricity consumption
of 50 billion kWh by 2023which would
represent a 16% increase over 2012even
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2. Banking on gas. Reserve margins for Hong Kongs two largest vertically integrated companies, CLP Power Hong Kong and HK Electric, were about 30% and 50%, respectively, but are
expected to decline in the coming five years as demand grows and some generating units are
retired. About 68% of HK Electrics power comes from coal-fired units, though it also owns the
massive 3.7-GW natural gasfired Lamma Power Station, shown here. Courtesy: HK Electric
as several power generating units are slated

to be retired. The governments consultation document also notes that the territory
lacks its own indigenous resources for pow-
er generation, but that local companies,

which have a total generating capacity of
about 12 GW and produce about 77% of
the regions power, have ensured reliabil-
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ity exceeds 99.99%. The regions last major

blackout was in the mid-1980s.
Since the mid-1990s, Hong Kong has
drawn nearly 25% of its power needs
from Chinas Daya Bay nuclear power
plant in Shenzhen. Both options would
keep the level of imported nuclear power
at about 20%.
But to get more power from the mainland, as called for in the grid option,
government authorities conceded that
Hong Kong would need to create a new
cross-border link, one capable of transmitting about 30% of the regions projected
power demand by 2023 from the shortagestricken China Southern Power Grid. And
it would still require 50% to be generated
locally, with 40% from gas and 10% from
coal and renewables.
Meanwhile, increasing gas generation
under the local generation option would
mean Hong Kongs two largest power
providers, CLP Power Hong Kong and HK
Electric (Figure 2), would need to triple
investment in new generation. While natural gas would make up the lions share
of the regions generation at 60%, the remaining 20% would still come from coal
and possibly renewables.
Officials seem to lean toward the grid
option, pointing out that the region already buys all of its gas from the mainland, and that more imports will allow
Hong Kong to access a greater diversity of
clean energy sources.
In a recent submission to the governments public consultation on the regions
future fuel mix, CLP Power said a phased
and flexible approach combining both
planning for initial gas units and intensive study for a new cross-border interconnector would deliver the best long-term
value for Hong Kong.
HK Electric, meanwhile, backed the local generation option, pointing out that
the grid option is untested and highly
uncertain. And while it would involve
engineering complexity and huge land
demand, the grid option would also endanger Hong Kongs supply of safe and reliable electricity, increase emissions, with
a tariff impact much more significant
than that under the local generation option, noted HK Electrics Managing Director Wan Chi-tin.
The local option, on the other hand, is
flexible and workable, said Wan. Responding to concerns about the regional volatility
of natural gas prices now and in the future,
Wan said rapid gas infrastructure development along the Guangdong Coast is expected,
along with new offshore gas field production
in the South China Sea.

10
www.powermag.com
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and efficiency targets. In a combined cycle facility, ZEECO low-NOx
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THE BIG PICTURE: The Natural Gas Trade

Recent natural gas supply and demand shifts are being reflected by morphing trade movements worldwide. The arrows
show how gas volumes traded via major routes have changed between 2009 and 2013 in billion cubic meters (bcm). The
balloons show natural gas demand that has been projected specifically for power generation between 2012 and 2018, also
in bcm. To learn more about how gas trading routes could change even more over the next few years, see Re-routing
Natural Gas, a web supplement associated with this infographic at www.powermag.com. Sources: BP Statistical Review of
World Energy 2014, IEA Gas Medium Term Market Report, 2013 Copy and artwork by Sonal Patel, a POWER associate editor
(@POWERmagazine, @sonalcpatel)
OECD Americas
Former Soviet Union/

Non-OECD Europe
327
352
358
OECD Europe
12
159
371
12
173
18
12
Non-OECD Asia
18
179
136
18
18
12
+5.3
-67.5
-24.3
+48.9
+2.6
+9.1
-2.4
+8.3
+12
-5.5
+11.6
+12.8
-15.6
+9.9
+11.4
-6.7
-29.4 +19.9
+7.6
-8.1
+20.8
Middle East
S. America
+6.8
+3.6
49 68
159
Africa
12 18
65 86
12
205
12 18
18
OECD Asia Oceania
128
12
Trade flows via pipeline
137
18
Liquefied natural gas flows

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member states
12
www.powermag.com
Commercial-Scale Carbon
Capture Project Starts
Construction in Texas
Construction on a $1 billion commercialscale carbon capture and storage (CCS)
systemone of the worlds largest to use
post-combustion capture technologybegan this July at NRG Energys W.A. Parish
Unit 8 near Houston. The facility is expected to be operational by the end of 2016.
Formerly known as the NRG Energy Parish CCS Project, it is expected to capture
about 1.6 million tons per annum (Mtpa)
of carbon dioxide (CO2) from a 240-MW
equivalent portion of the flue gas from
Unit 8 (Figure 3). The CO2 will then be
compressed and piped through an 82mile-long pipeline to the West Ranch oil
field for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
The project received a financial boost
this July as JX Nippon Oil and Gas Exploration Ltd. bought a 50% stake in NRG Energy subsidiary Petra Nova Holdings LLC.
The companies now also each own a 25%
interest in the oil field along with Hilcorp
Energy Co. EOR could boost oil production
at the field from around 500 barrels per
day to about 15,000 barrels per day, NRG
Energy said.
The project will use the KM-CDR Process
developed jointly by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Kansai Electric Power
Co. MHI has since 2006 conducted smallscale (10 metric tons per day [mtpd])
demonstration testing for CO2 capture
from coal-fired flue gas with J-POWER. In
December 2013, it wrapped up a threeyear 500-mtpd capture demonstration test
at Alabama Powers Plant Barry. By comparison, the Petra Nova project will have a
CO2 capture capacity of 4,776 mtpd.
The Petra Nova project in 2009 received
$167 million in financing under the third
round of the cost-shared Clean Coal Power
Initiative, of which about $7 million has
been received in the initial design and
engineering phase, NRG Energy said. The
project will also rely on loans of $250 million from the Japan Bank for International
Cooperation and Mizuho Bank Ltd., backed
by Nippon Export and Investment Insurance. NRG and JX Nippon are each expected to contribute $300 million.
The worlds only other large-scale postcombustion capture project for power
generation is being built by SaskPower, an
entity owned solely by the Saskatchewan
government, at the 139-MW Unit 3 of the
Boundary Dam coal-fired power plant near
Estevan. That project, whose anticipated
carbon capture start date was July 2014,
uses an amine absorption process designed
by Shell Global Canosolv.
CO2 from the Boundary Dam project, an
estimated 1 Mtpa, will be used primarily
for EOR at the Weyburn Oil Unit and will
supplement the existing CO2 supply to the
WeyburnMidale fields delivered by the
205-mile Souris Valley pipeline from the
Great Plains Synfuel gasification facility in
North Dakota. Any CO2 from the project that
is not used in EOR will be injected into a
deep saline formation through SaskPowers
Carbon Storage and Research Centre.
The Global CCS Institute suggests that
at least seven other large-scale postcom-
3. A CCS milestone. Construction of a commercial-scale postcombustion carbon capture

project kicked off this July at NRG Energys W.A. Parish Unit 8 near Houston. The carbon dioxide
(CO2) capture system, which has been renamed the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project, will
consist of a flue-gas quencher, absorber, and regeneration system; a CO2 compression unit; and
utility facilities. Courtesy: Business Wire
bustion capture projects are in various

stages of development worldwide, with
most of the CO2 to be used for enhanced
hydrocarbon recovery.
Along with Petra Nova and Boundary
Dam, only one other large-scale CCS project
at a power plant is actually under construction: Southern Co. subsidiary Mississippi
Power is rushing to make headway and
open the integrated gasification combined
cycle power plant in Kemper County, Miss.,
in 2015. That project includes a precombustion carbon capture system that will
use a physical solvent process (Selexol) to
capture 3 Mtpa of CO2.
A Nuclear Status and

Trend Overview
The worlds nuclear power generation
capacity is slated to grow between 17%
and 94% through 2030, the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) forecasts
in its 2013 Annual Report, released this
July. However, it notes, those figures are
slightly lower than projections made in
2012, owing to the continuing impact of
the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the low
price of natural gas, and the increasing
use of renewable energy.
Outlining the worlds nuclear power
status and trends, the autonomous international organization notes that 434
nuclear power reactors were in operation
worldwide with a total generating capacity of 371.7 GWe at the end of 2013. Last
year, four reactors were connected to the
grid and construction began on 10 new
reactors. Meanwhile, the United Arab
Emirates poured the first concrete for the
second unit at the Barakah site, and Belarus began construction of the first unit
at the Ostrovets site, becoming the second country in the past three decades to
start building its first nuclear power plant
(Figure 4).
4. A nuclear novelty.
Belarus began
construction of the first unit at the Ostrovets
site in November 2013. This image was taken
in May 2014. Courtesy: Polish National Atomic
Energy Agency
14
www.powermag.com
While it suggests that the outlook for

nuclear power appears foggy, the IAEA
points out that in total, 72 reactors were
under construction at the end of last
yearthe highest number since 1989. Of
these, 48 are in Asia. And of the 30 countries currently planning to use nuclear
power, 25 were either expanding or planning to expand their fleet at the end of
last year, the IAEA reported.
At the same time, several nuclear newcomers reportedly made significant progress on their first nuclear power plants
last year. Bangladesh began site preparation work for its two-unit Rooppur plant,
and Jordan selected Atomstroyexport as a
preferred vendor for its first plant. Turkey
signed two cooperation agreements with
Japan for the Sinop plant, while Vietnam
prepared feasibility studies of two sites in
Ninh Thuan province.
At the end of 2013, more than 80%
of the currently operating nuclear power
plants worldwide had been in service for
20 years or more, and many countries
had given high priority to licensing their
nuclear power plants to operate for terms
beyond the 30 to 40 years originally anticipated, the IAEA says.
On the nuclear fuel back end, the first
geological disposal facility was expected
to be operational in 2022, and it will be
several decades until such facilities are
commonly available in countries with nuclear power programs, the report notes.
One trend that is apparent on the fuel
front is that some reactor owners have
expressed concern over the assurance
of a long-term supply of reactor fuel,
says the IAEA. One potential mitigating
strategy is to use fuel from more than
one supplier. However, due to differences
in design and material, use of fuel from
different suppliers in the same reactor
core can present both technical and regulatory challenges.
5.
Hydropower giant. Commissioning of all 18 generating units at Chinas 13.9GW Xiluodu Hydropower Station has been
completed, making it the worlds third-largest
hydroelectric project after the Three Gorges
and Brazilian Itaipu complexes. This image is
an aerial view of the dam during construction.
Courtesy: China Three Gorges Corp.
China Commissions 13.9GW Hydropower Project

Commissioning of all 18 generating units
at Chinas 13.9-GW Xiluodu Hydropower
Station has been completed, making it the
worlds third-largest hydroelectric project
(Figure 5), China Three Gorges Corp. announced in early July.
The massive $6.2 billion project is
situated on the Jinsha River, a major
headstream of the Yangtze River, in
southwest Yunnan and Sichuan provinc-
es. It is Chinas second largest after the

22.5-GW Three Gorges Dam and consists
of a 278-meter-tall concrete doublecurvature arch dam with a crest elevation of 610 m and a crest length of 700
m. Two large underground power houses
are inside the left and right banks, each
with nine 770-MW Francis turbine units.
The station can reportedly generate 57.1
billion kWh a year.
Construction of the project began in
December 2005, and it began generating
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power in July 2013. Meanwhile, work continues on three other large projects on the
Jinsha River cascade, including at the 6.4GW Xiangjiaba dam, which should be fully
operational by July 2015.
POWER Digest
EU Doles Out 1 Billion in Funding for
Renewable Projects Under NER 300.
The European Commission on July 10
awarded 1 billion ($1.34 billion) to 19
renewable energy projects and a carbon
capture and storage (CCS) project under
its NER 300 program. The projects will
cumulatively raise European Union (EU)
renewable energy production by about 18
TWh annually. Capture Powers White Rose
CCS project in the UK secured the highest
award of 300 million, followed by E.ONs
200-MW Bio2G biomass gasification plant,
which won 203.7 million. Projects will be
hosted in Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.
Mexico to Offer Power, Gas Infrastructure Contracts. Mexicos stateowned power company, CFE, will by the
end of this year offer $2.8 billion in contracts to build two combined-cycle power
plants, two natural gas pipelines, and a
transmission line near Mexicos northern
border with the U.S. to boost natural gas
imports from the U.S. The contracts for
the projects that could be operational by 2017 are expected to be open to
private firms. They will include the $1
billion combined cycle Norte III power
plant near Ciudad Juarez and the 714-MW
combined cycle Guaymas II power plant
in Sonora state. Also included is the
263-mile Encino-La Laguna natural gas
pipeline, which will transport gas from
southern Texas for supply in the northern
Chihuahua and Durango states, and the
268-mile Huasteca-Monterrey transmission line. CFE said the projects will help
tamp down electricity rates.
AREVA and Gamesa Partner to

Capture More European Offshore
Wind Market Share. Frances AREVA
and Spains Gamesa on July 7 formed
a 50/50 joint venture to combine their
offshore wind assets, including a 2.8GW project pipeline. The companies said
their joint ventures objective is to garner a market share of close to 20% in
Europe by 2020. AREVA has developed
5-MW and 8-MW offshore wind turbines
and installed 630 MW so far, while
Gamesa will contribute its 5-MW offshore platform and offshore research and
development knowledge. The companies
16
will target markets in Germany, France,

and the UK, where installed capacity is
slated to exceed 25 GW in 2020.
MHPS-Led Consortium to Build Lignite Ultrasupercritical Unit in Poland.

A consortium comprising Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) European
division, Polish civil engineering company
Budimex SA, and Spanish engineering firm
Tcnicas Reunidas, S.A. in July signed a
contract with Polands state-owned power
provider, Polska Grupa Energetyczna
S.A., to build a lignite-fired ultrasupercritical unit at Turw, Poland. The 450-MW
coal unit is slated to begin operations in
the middle of 2019.
Poland has one of the worlds largest coal reservesmostly lignite, which
has a high water content that makes it
less efficient to burnand it generates
90% of its gross power from coal. MHPS
said that by installing desulfurization
equipment with high-efficiency boilers,
the company is able to provide power
generation systems that make effective
use of lignite with reduced emissions
compared to older plants. The company
plans to undertake aggressive marketing in a broad range of countries and
regions where demand for coal-fired
power generation systems is expected
to increaseespecially in Eastern Eu-
rope, Russia, Turkey and Indonesia, it

said in July.
Candu Energy, CNPEC Agree to Cooperate on Romanian Reactors. SNCLavalins Candu Energy on July 24 signed
a binding and exclusive cooperation agreement with China Nuclear Power Engineering Co. (CNPEC) for the construction
of CANDU Units 3 and 4 at the Cernavoda
Nuclear Power Plant in Romania. Romania
already has two operating CANDU 6 nuclear
reactors, which came into service in 1996
and 2007. The agreement follows a letter of
intent signed by CNPECs parent company
China General Nuclear Power Group and
Romanian utility Societatea Nationala
Nuclearelectrica in November 2013 for investment in and development of two additional nuclear units at the Cernavoda site.
Russia OKs 10-Year Life Extension

for Kalinin. Russian regulators in late
June allowed Rosenergoatom to extend
the life of the Kalinin-1 nuclear reactor by
10 years until 2025. Kalinin is a four-unit
plant located in the western Tver region
near the town of Udomiya. The plants
first two units began commercial operation in 1986 and 1987. Rosenergoatom
completed Kalinin 3 and 4 in 2004 and
2012, respectively.
Sonal Patel is a POWER associate editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
Most-Read Stories at powermag.com in July

Top 5 stories from the print magazine:
Steam Turbine Rotor Vibration Failures: Causes and
Solutions
Blurring the Line Between Temporary and Permanent
Power
Energy Storage Technologies Primer
The Water-Energy Nexus Takes Center Stage
Does IGCC Have a Future?
Top 5 stories from POWERnews:
Ginna Fights to Avoid Being Next Nuclear Plant
Shuttered
Construction Begins on Worlds Largest Carbon Capture
Retrofit
McCarthy Fields Carbon Rule Concerns on Coal, Costs,
Climate Change
Germany Reforms Renewable Energy Laws
Southern Co. Considering New Nuclear Plant, But Thats
Not All
All POWER content is available at powermag.com via the
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New Disaster Preparedness Approaches for

Nuclear Plants
To ensure that its nuclear plants do not
meet the same fate as those damaged
and destroyed by the March 2011 events
at the Fukushima Daiichi plantshould
they be hit by similarly severe natural
disastersTennessee Valley Authority
(TVA) is using multiple new approaches
to enhance safety.
First Installation of New Spent
Fuel Pool Instrumentation
Spent fuel pools are storage pools for
spent, or used, nuclear fuel from a nuclear reactor. As part of an industrywide
response to lessons learned from the
Japanese accident, all U.S. utilities are
required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to install spent fuel pool
level instrumentation at their nuclear
power plants.
In July, Westinghouse Electric Co. announced that it had completed the first
successful installation at a U.S. nuclear
plant site of a spent fuel pool level instrumentation system meeting the NRC
requirements. The system was installed
at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, which is
owned and operated by TVA.
In the event of an emergency that
causes an extended loss of AC power at
the plant, the new spent fuel pool instrumentation system provides plant operators with a way to monitor the water
level in the pool to verify that the used
fuel remains covered by water and appropriately cooled.
Westinghouse joined with a leading
global manufacturer of state-of-the-art
level instrumentation to supply the technology, which is provided by a guidedwave-radar sensor. This wide-range spent
fuel pool instrumentation system leverages robust technology to address NRC requirements, providing a reliable indication
of the spent fuel pool level.
Essentially, its a sonar device, TVA
explained to POWER. It sends a signal,
which bounces back when the density
changesmeaning the difference between liquid and airand it can be measured remotely to make sure the cooling
water remains at the necessary depth in
the event of an emergency.
Westinghouse has contracts to deliver
more than 90 spent fuel pool instrumen18
tation system solutions in the U.S. While

the system at Watts Bar has completed
all testing and has been declared operational, additional instrumentation systems
at other locations are in various stages of
installation and testing.
At Watts Bar, the instrumentation receives its backup power, as do all other
critical systems, from a series of backup
generators. One is on the top of the building housing the spent fuel pool. If that
fails, another backup generator is onsite,
and others can be brought in within a few
hours of placing a call for assistance.
Declaration of the Westinghouse spent
fuel pool instrumentation system as func-
tional at Watts Bar represents a significant milestone for Westinghouse and the
nuclear energy industry, said David Howell, senior vice president for Westinghouse
Automation and Field Services.
Backup Plans
In July, TVA also completed the first operational flex equipment storage building
in the world (Figure 1). The building is designed to store equipment needed as protection against extreme natural disasters like
the event that occurred in Fukushima. In
this case, the structure houses backup generators, pumps, and other materials, which
can be used to replace equipment damaged
1. Built to last. The flex equipment storage building is designed to withstand natural disasters of the most severe kind. Courtesy: TVA
2. Impenetrable.
The tornado-missile-shield door is designed to withstand impact from

flying objects as big as a 4,000-pound automobile, 6-inch- or 12-inch-diameter pipes, and utility
poles. Courtesy: TVA
www.powermag.com
during an event. Designed to withstand 360mph winds, the building has 18-inch thick
concrete walls. The rolling tornado-missileshield door (Figure 2)also 18 inches
thickis 14 feet wide and 16 feet tall.
And if that werent enough, two
new nuclear regional response centers
opened this year to ensure backup
equipment is available even following unthinkable disasters that disable
multiple nuclear plants at the same
time. The $40 million centerslocated
in the Phoenix, Ariz., and Memphis,
Tenn., metropolitan areasare stocked
with portable generators, water pumps,
lighting, and other equipment that can
be rapidly deployed in the event of an
emergency. The equipment, which is
preloaded onto trailers, can be delivered to any nuclear power plant in the
U.S. within 24 hours of a request.
Useful Redundancy
With all of the redundant backup systems,
TVA believes its new spent fuel pool instrumentation system can keep running
off of the available power indefinitely.
Edited by Aaron Larson, a POWER associate editor (@AaronL_Power,
@POWERmagazine).
The challenge is that drawings are

occasionally out of date. Changes are
often noted on paper drawings in real
time, but those changes are rarely entered immediately in the master as-built
drawings. Marked up paper plans can be
misplaced, and even when the markups
do make it back to the office, sometimes
they are just added to a stack awaiting entry by a computer-aided drafting
(CAD) operator.
However, a new solution is available to
document changes in the field and update drawings that is as easy to use as a
pen and paper. Anoto, a digital writing
technology company, and ChasmTech, a
company focusing on field data collection solutions, worked together to create a product called SmartInk Redline.
The tool is a digital pen, drawing markup
solution (Figure 1) designed for utilities,
architects, and engineers who need timely access to as-built information.
When users mark up CAD drawings us-
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Skilled maintenance and service teams inspect critical infrastructure, perform preventive maintenance, and quickly respond
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drawings that reflect original plans along
with the cumulative changes. Armed with
the current drawings, service teams can
avoid surprises.
1. A digital writing solution. The pen

looks and feels like a standard pen, but data is
collected digitally to update drawings or forms
in the cloud. Courtesy: ChasmTech
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Special features:
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19
2. Red-lined update.
Once a drawing or form is marked up, it is date-stamped, saved,

and redistributed to project team members with the latest information. Courtesy: ChasmTech
ing Anoto Live technology, a portable

document format (PDF) file is generated,
including the field markups, and the document is automatically distributed by way of
the cloud to the extended project team.

The solution consolidates all markups, ensuring that the owner, engineer, technician, contractor, designer, and drafter all
have immediate access to the most current information, regardless of originator.
Drafting staff also have access to as-built
information, which improves project documentation and minimizes the time and effort required to complete drawings.
In todays design and construction
environment, managing versions of PDF
files is as challengingif not more challengingthan managing paper drawings,
particularly when the PDF files are widely
distributed, said Lance Maidlow, president of ChasmTech.
Anoto Live PDF provides the ability to
distribute design drawings on paper or
as PDF files that can be plotted by third
parties. As markups are made with the
Anoto digital pens, they are consolidated into a single PDF file, permitting designers to review field changes as they
occur (Figure 2). The markups can be
sent by Bluetooth or by docking the pen
(Figure 3). Recipients can also be added
and removed at any time, depending on
the phase of the project.
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3. Beam me up, Scottie! The docking station offers a quick and easy way to upload digital data from the pen to drawings or forms, which can be accessed by the entire project team.
Courtesy: ChasmTech
SmartInk Redline automatically reads

the Anoto Live PDF files as they are returned and generates AutoCAD drawing
exchange format files that can be loaded

directly into industry standard CAD softwareincluding AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT,
Revit, Visio, and MicroStationas CAD

entities on date-stamped layers. Drafting
staff can systematically review the markups and update the as-built information,
minimizing the time required to complete
a project while ensuring that all field
changes are incorporated.
Anoto Live digital writing technology solves the sizeable challenge faced
by utilities, architects, and engineers
who need to collaborate on projects,
said Stein Revelsby, CEO of Anoto Group
AB. By automating document handling,
teams can spot issues faster, and avoid
problems that can result from inefficient communication and unidentified
issues.
ChasmTech offers both mobile and digital pen options, which allows the company to configure solutions best suited
to specific organizational needs. One
pen can write on multiple documents,
and multiple pens can write on the same
document. Users also have the option of
changing ink color and weight on the returned documents.
Edited by Aaron Larson, a POWER associate editor (@AaronL_Power,
@POWERmagazine).
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21
What Went Wrong with

SMRs?
Thomas W. Overton, JD
t the graveyard wherein resides the nuclear renaissance
of the 2000s, a new occupant appears to be moving in: the
small modular reactor (SMR).
This is a statement that might have appeared nonsensical even
a year ago. SMRs looked to be the Next Big Thing in nuclear,
a way to circumvent the biggest obstacle to new nuclear generation: the enormous up-front costs for conventional nuclear
plants. Instead of the billions required for multi-gigawatt projects (Georgia Powers 2.2-GW Plant Vogtle expansion is projected
to cost nearly $15 billion, for example), SMRs would be much
smalleron the order of 50 MW to 200 MWmuch simpler and
more standardized, and much cheaper.
Most of the momentum for SMRs has come from the Department of Energy (DOE), which has been throwing out hundreds of
millions of dollars in cost-shared funding intended to jump-start
the industry. The DOE launched its SMR Licensing Technical Support Program in 2010 with the goal of [advancing] the certification and licensing of domestic SMR designs that are relatively
mature and can be deployed in the next decade. Congress duly
appropriated $452 million for the initiative.
The first recipient of the DOEs largess was a joint venture between Babcock & Wilcox and Bechtel, which got an unspecified
amount of 50-50 funding for its 180-MW mPower design. This
May, the DOE awarded another $217 million in matching funds
to Corvallis, Ore.based NuScalemajority-owned by Fluorto
help develop its 45-MW SMR.
Folks in the nuclear industry were excited about SMRs, seeing
them as a way to break the decades-old logjam that had stalled
new nuclear development, as well as a more cost-friendly means
of deploying all sorts of high-tech, high-performance operating
and safety features nuclear engineers have been dreaming about
since Three Mile Island.
Wheres the Market?

But something happened on the way to that promised land. Over
the past year, the SMR industry has been bumping up against
an uncomfortable and not-entirely-unpredictable problem: It appears that no one actually wants to buy one.
In June last year, MidAmerican Energy scuttled plans to build
an SMR-based plant in Iowa, saying the project was premature
given the state of SMR technology. (When Warren Buffett backs
out of your project, thats generally not a good sign.)
This spring, Babcock & Wilcox appeared to scale back much of
its SMR program. It wants to revise its cost-sharing agreement
with the DOE to cut its annual spending from around $80 million
to just $15 million. Then it took the ominous step of laying off
100 workers in its SMR division.
Babcock & Wilcox insists mPower is still going forward, but its
most recent projections still put first operation a decade away,
and plans to submit the design for Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing have been delayed.
22
Meanwhile, having lost out on the second round of funding,

Westinghouse announced that its SMR program was simply closing up shop. CEO Danny Roderick neatly encapsulated the problem facing SMRs: This company that helped create the nuclear
energy business, and that has built reactors around the world,
was unable to find any prospective customers.
Economics 101
What went wrong? The problem has really been lurking in the
idea behind SMRs all along.
The reason conventional nuclear plants are built so large is
the economies of scale: Big plants can produce power less expensively per kilowatt-hour than smaller ones. The SMR concept
disdains those economies of scale in favor of others: large-scale
standardized manufacturing that will churn out dozens, if not
hundreds, of identical plants, each of which would ultimately
produce cheaper kilowatt-hours than large one-off designs.
Its an attractive idea. But its also one that depends on someone
building that massive supply chain, since none of it currently exists.
According to Westinghouses Roderick, Unless youre going to build
30 to 50 of them, youre not going to make your money back. Which
means that building that supply chain would require a lot more than
the $452 million the DOE has to hand out. That money would presumably come from customer ordersif there were any.
Unfortunately, the SMR market doesnt exist in a vacuum.
SMRs must compete with cheap natural gas, renewables that continue to decline in cost, and storage options that are rapidly
becoming competitive. Worse, those options are available for delivery now, not at the end of a long, uncertain process that still
lacks NRC approval.
How Much Support?
The DOE, theoretically, could do more than hand out money. Renewables, after all, were a niche market until governments began
enacting mandates for generation. The biggest current markets
for nuclear are countries like China, where top-down energy
planning is the norm. Countries like the U.S. with open energy
markets are seeing viable plants shut down in the face of competition (the Vogtle units, not insignificantly, are being built in the
most tightly regulated market in the country).
Short of some sort of Nuclear Portfolio Standard, its very difficult to see SMRs getting the traction they need to reach those
hoped-for economies of scale. But with much of the enthusiasm for
renewable mandates waningworld leader Germany, for example,
scaled back its renewable subsidies in Junethe prospects for a
completely new SMR mandate would seem, at best, remote.
As a nuclear veteran myself, Id love to see those high-tech
reactors get built. But the question has to be answered: Who will
pay for them?
Thomas W. Overton, JD is a POWER associate editor
(@thomas_overton, @POWERmagazine).
www.powermag.com
TOP PLANTS
Andong Combined Cycle Power

Plant, Andong, South Korea
Owner/operator: Korea Southern Power Co.
Courtesy: Siemens AG
For a country focused on wooing big businesses, constructing large industrial complexes, and building new administration offices, having a reliable electricity supply is
vital. But with few natural resources, flexible and efficient generation is imperative.
Aaron Larson
orea Southern Power Co. (KOSPO)

CEO Lee Sang Ho has a vision of
making KOSPO into a global top 10
power company with the highest possible efficiencies and the best overall cost reductions
as its core strategies. The Andong combined
cycle power plant (CCPP)a 417-MW gasfired plant utilizing Siemens H-class technologyfits this vision and is a worthy POWER
Top Plant.
The plant was constructed in record
timeonly 24 monthsthrough the teamwork of KOSPO, Siemens AG, and GS
Engineering and Construction Corp. (GS
E&C). Previous projects of this kind had
taken between 30 and 40 months to complete, but improved planning and timing of
critical component deliveries made schedule
compression possible.
Resource Challenges
Although South Korea has experienced very
rapid economic growth and is currently the
24
eighth-largest trading nation in the world, the

countrys natural resources are very limited.
Incredibly, 96% of its energy comes from imports, a large portion of which is in the form
of oil, coal, and liquefied natural gas (LNG).
South Korea is a member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)a 34-member group
of countries dedicated to global development that includes many of the worlds most
advanced countries as well as emerging
countries like Mexico, Chile, and Turkey.
While the average OECD country has seen
electricity generation remain flat over the
past five years, South Koreas electric generation has grown 24%. Its ongoing need for
energy is unquestionable.
Like many countries in Asia, South Koreas energy mix relies heavily on coal, which
accounts for about 45% of its electricity generation. However, the country is not blind to
the environmental implications of expanding
coal usage, and it has indicated that technolowww.powermag.com
gies such as integrated gasification combined

cycle with carbon capture and storage are a
priority. Of course, the added expense of utilizing new technologies reduces coals cost
benefit when compared to other alternatives.
Nuclear power accounts for a large portion
of electricity generation in South Korea too
nearly 30% of the supplybut its future is in
question as a result of the Fukushima disaster
in Japan, which has people fearing a similar
type of accident in South Korea.
The government has ambitious targets
for renewable energy, aiming for 12% of
all consumption from renewables by 2027.
However, with economic growth projected
to be the highest of all the OECD nations,
South Korea will likely need to expand its
LNG usage to meet the growing electricity demand.
Adding to the Mix

The Andong CCPP is located in the city of
the same name in the province of Gyeong-
TOP PLANTS
sangbuk-do. The location is in the midland
of South Korea, which presented some
unique challenges during construction.
The area does not have an industrial zone
and therefore was lacking in a skilled labor
workforce. Many foreigners may not realize
it, but the average winter temperatures in the
region are below freezing. During the winter
of 2012while the plant was completing
civil and architectural worktemperatures
were exceptionally cold, with typical lows
of 10C to 15C (14F to 5F). Inland transportation of heavy equipment created logistical issues, and material shipments to the
site were also challenging. Navigating these
hurdles makes the construction record all
the more impressive.
Like many other countries, South Korea
has the usual summer and winter peak demand seasons due to hot and cold weather
patterns. One of KOSPOs main considerations when selecting a supplier for the turnkey project was operational flexibility. The
plant itself is designed for 250 starts per
year with a startup time of only 30 minutes
to reach full load. But just as flexibility was
important, so was efficiency.
While low natural gas prices have been
driving expanded usage in countries like the
U.S. and Canada, the price is considerably
higher for importers due to the cost of liquefaction, transport, and regasification. South
Korea is the worlds second-largest LNGimporting nation behind Japan, so efficient
use of the fuel is a top priority to keep the
overall cost of electricity down. The fact that
the plant has an efficiency of more than 60%
is a significant benefit for the Andong CCPP
(Table 1).
We place special emphasis on maximized efficiency, operational flexibility,
and environmental friendliness. For that
reason we opted for a solution provided
by Siemens, which features cutting-edge
power plant technology. The plants quality and the fast project execution once
again proved that Siemens is a very experienced and reliable partner for us, stated
Lee Sang Ho.
Getting Gas
Table 1. Siemens combined cycle

power plant specifications. Source:
Package Deal
Siemens AG
SGT6-8000H technical data
Net power output (MW)
Single shaft
410
Net plant efficiency (%)
>60
Net heat rate (kJ/kWh)
<6,000
Net heat rate (Btu/kWh)
<5,687
No. gas turbines
Pressure / Reheat
Triple / Existing
1. Rotor assembly. This image is of an SGT6-8000H gas turbine rotor in Siemens Berlin
manufacturing plant. Source: Siemens AG
The Korea Gas Corp. (KOGAS) handles the

importation of LNG for South Korea. It has
been getting about 80% of its LNG from the
Middle East and Southeast Asia, but that is
likely to change soon, in part to ensure energy security, as well as for competitive pricing reasons.
KOGAS is working together with Shell,
Mitsubishi Corp., and PetroChina Co. to
design, build, and operate the proposed
LNG Canada project, planned near Kitimat, British Columbia. KOGAS also has
a contract with Cheniere Energys Sabine
Pass LNG terminal, located along the Sabine Pass River between Texas and Louisiana, to purchase 3.5 million metric tons of
LNG annually.
The LNG is shipped to three major terminals along the south and west coasts of South
Korea. A main ring pipeline has been installed
around the circumference of the country
through which the gas can be piped to all of
its users. A new terminal is also being constructed on the east coast to contribute a more
reliable supply all around South Korea.
The Andong CCPP is designed as a singleshaft power plant. As the consortium leader,
with its partner GS E&C, Siemens was not
only responsible for erection of the plant,
but also supplied the major components,
including an SGT6-8000H gas turbine
(Figure 1), an SST6-5000 steam turbine,
an SGen6-2000H generator, and a Benson
heat-recovery steam generator. The SPPAT3000 instrumentation and control system and other auxiliary systems were also
www.powermag.com
part of the package. In addition, Siemens

signed a 10-year maintenance contract for
the main components.
The trustful relationship developed
with KOSPO and our partner GS E&C
made it possible to execute this power
plant in record time to support the high
power demand in the Andong area. The
project execution also was a benchmark in
terms of health and safety, and zero harm
in Korea, said Lothar Balling, executive
vice president and head of global project
management in the Siemens Energy Power
Generation division.
Siemens has three additional CCPPs with
H-class gas turbines under construction in
South Korea with a total capacity of 2,500
MW, which are scheduled to commence operation over the course of 2014 and 2015. An
enhanced sealing system, which minimizes
cooling air losses, and an advanced compressor design and coating, contribute favorably
to the plants efficiency.
We have already proven that our Hclass power plants are very flexible in operation, said Balling. This type of plant
can be brought up to full load in only 30
minutes, with efficiency levels of over 60%
net after six to eight hours shutdownand
this with a starting and operational reliability of over 98%.
With the Andong CCPP as a flagship
for its fleet, KOSPO is well on its way to
reaching Sang Hos ambitious goal of becoming a leading power company on the
global stage.
Aaron Larson is a POWER associate

editor (@POWERmagazine,
@AaronL_Power).
25
TOP PLANTS
CPV Sentinel Energy Project,

Desert Hot Springs, California
Owner/operator: Competitive Power Ventures and Diamond Generating Corp.
Courtesy: CPV
Awash in a sea of wind turbines, Californias Coachella Valley needed reliable peaking generation to back up its intermittent wind power. Competitive Power Ventures
answered the call with the eight-unit, 800-MW Sentinel plant.
riving west on Interstate 10 through

the Mojave Desert in California is a
mostly monotonous experience of
sand, scrub brush, and rolling, rocky hillsides. When you enter the Coachella Valley north of the Salton Sea, the desert is
increasingly broken up by the golf courses
and resorts of Palm Springs. But you soon
reach the San Gorgonio Pass, which separates the desert from the greater Los Angeles area, and your attention is seized by
another sight entirely.
On both sides of the highway, spreading
over the desert and climbing the mountains
around the pass, are wind turbinesthousands
of them, large and small, old and new, stretching for miles across the sand and hills. Its
the oldest utility-scale wind farm in the U.S.,
and still one of the largest, comprising somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 turbines with
26
a total capacity between 600 MW and 900

MW (exact figures are difficult to come by
because of the large number of individual
owners and unclear data on which turbines
are still operational).
The San Gorgonio Pass is one of the
windiest spots in the U.S., as its one of the
few gaps in the mountain ranges around Los
Angeles. Created by the San Andreas Fault,
which runs through it, the pass splits a range
that rises to nearly 9,000 feet on both sides.
On most days, cool, moist air from along the
coast is drawn into the hot, dry air of the desert, creating winds that average 14 mph to 20
mph upwards of 300 days a year.
All that wind created a mecca for wind
farm development in the 1980s, and the area
has long been an important element of Californias renewable energy fleet. But as the
states needs have grown with the passage of
www.powermag.com
its 33%-by-2020 renewables portfolio standard (RPS), the need for peaking generation
and reliable ancillary services has grown
with it.
Meeting a Need
In the mid-2000s, as part of its long-range
planning, Southern California Edison (SCE)
began looking for new generation to meet its
needs for capacity and ancillary services in
the Los Angeles area, particularly Coachella
Valley. Maryland-based Competitive Power
Ventures (CPV), an independent generator
focused on natural gas and wind, proposed
building an eight-unit peaking plant near
Palm Springs. SCE and CPV entered a 10year power purchase agreement for generation from five of the eight units in February
2007 (later extended to all eight), and CPV
submitted its application for certification to
Powering
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(913) 928-7000
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ADVANCED
GENERATION
TECHNOLOGIES
TOP PLANTS
the California Energy Commission (CEC)
that June.
The 37-acre sitesurrounded on all sides
by wind turbineswas chosen because of a
number of advantages. Though greenfield,
the area was zoned for industrial use and
would have only limited environmental impact. One of the SCE substations that gathers
generation from the area wind farms is about
700 feet away, and the natural gas supply line
could be extended from a small peaker plant
a few miles further on.
But despite the advantages, the project
soon ran into a completely unrelated roadblock that halted development for more than
a year. In August 2007, the South Coast Air
Quality Management District (SCAQMD),
which oversees emissions permitting in the
area, amended its rules for how it issued offset
credits for proposed power plant emissions.
The new rule was challenged in court, and
in June 2008, the California Superior Court
threw out the revised approach, which meant
that the SCAQMD had no authority to issue
credits until a new rule was in place. Projects without emissions permits, like Sentinel,
had no way to go forward unless they could
purchase the credits on the open marketa
very expensive proposition. The SCAQMD
appealed the decision, but lost.
The threat this ruling presented to generation planning in California caused the state
legislature to pass a law in September 2009
allowing SCAQMD to issue a limited number
of unreleased credits. Permitting for Sentinel
was then able to resume, and the CEC issued
final approval in December 2010. This cleared
the way to close financing on the $900 million
project the following May. GE Energy Financial Services and Diamond Generating Corp.
(DGC) joined the project, with a total of 23
banks providing nearly $800 million in credit
facilities. (In fact, interest in the project was
so high that the syndicated loan was 2.4 times
oversubscribed.)
A Big Niche
Gemma Power Systems was awarded the
engineering, procurement, and construction contract, and ground was broken in
July 2011. Construction proceeded ahead
of schedule, and the plant was able to begin
testing of the first three turbines in January
2013. Though completion was originally
planned for late summer, the plant reached
commercial operation in mid-May, more than
three months early. This was despite having
to conduct much of the construction at night
or in the early morning hours because of high
temperatures during the day.
In all, 350 direct and indirect jobs were
created by the project, and more than 731,000
man-hours were put in. The plant is now
28
1. Eight-pack.
One of CPV Sentinels eight GE LMS100 gas turbines is lifted into place
during construction. The site is completely surrounded by wind turbines that make up the San
Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm. Courtesy: CPV
jointly owned by CPV (which serves as plant

manager), DGC (which operates the facility),
and other private investors.
The 800-MW CPV Sentinel plant is designed from the ground up to be a fast-responding, environmentally friendly facility.
Power is provided by eight General Electric LMS100 aeroderivative gas turbines
operating in simple cycle mode (Figure 1).
Emissions are kept low through the use of
water-injected combustors with selective catalytic reduction and oxidation catalyst.
To maintain efficiency in an environment
where ambient temperatures can exceed 120F,
the turbines employ evaporative cooling for
inlet air as well as intercooling. Hot air from
the first compressor section is passed through
an external water-cooled heat exchanger before being returned to the compressor. Cooling for this and other processes is provided
by single-cell cooling towers (one for each
turbine) using recirculating water. The plant
employs membrane-based wastewater treatment processes coupled with a crystallizer
zero-liquid discharge system to handle project wastewater.
To reduce its impact on local water supplies, CPV Sentinel purchases water for the
local Desert Water Agency (DWA) equal to
108% of its use. The project has also funded
a variety of water efficiency measures for
DWA to minimize its impact on scarce local
water supplies. The arrangement has already
recharged the local aquifer with more water
than the plant is expected to use during its
first 10 years of operation.
www.powermag.com
The state-of-the-art facility requires a staff

of only 14. Output can range from 50 MW to
800 MW, and the LMS100 turbines can reach
full output from cold start in as little as 10
minutes. The use of multiple small turbines
allows the plant to maintain better than 41%
efficiency from 100 MW all the way up to
full power. Each unit can be dispatched and
controlled independently.
Carrying Its Weight

CPV Sentinels generation has helped reduce
the risk of brownouts and instability during
periods of high demand from the areas fierce
summer heat. Its also increased the California Independent System Operator (CAISO)
and SCEs ability to integrate additional renewable generation as part of plans for Californias 2020 RPS target.
As a peaker plant, CPV Sentinels generation is capped at 30% yearly capacity factor
and a total of 300 starts and 2,500 hours of
operation per year. In its first year, it has been
dispatched frequently and has seen better
than 99% availability. In addition to generation, the plant is providing spinning and nonspinning reserve and frequency regulation
services for CAISO and SCE.
For serving as a key element in Southern
Californias reliability planning and completing this low-impact project ahead of schedule, CPV Sentinel is recognized as a POWER
Top Plant.
Thomas W. Overton, JD is a POWER associate editor (@POWERmagazine,

@thomas_overton).
How NYU kept the power

on when all else went dark.
Completely integrated boiler solutions can generate results for you, too.
During the worst of Hurricane Sandy, NYU kept the power on for 59 buildings with an
innovative co-generation system that utilized two Cleaver-Brooks Max-Fire HRSGs
that allowed it to operate when the grid went down. Read about this case study
and others at cleaverbrooks.com/NYU or call 1-800-250-5883 to locate your local rep.

2014 Cleaver-Brooks, Inc.
TOP PLANTS
Jingqiao Power Plant, Beijing,

China
Owner/operator: Beijing Jingqiao Thermal Power Co., Ltd
Courtesy: Beijing Jingqiao Thermal Power Co., Ltd
The Municipal Government of Beijing through its operating companies is making

enormous investment into its power and energy infrastructure, particularly combined heat and power facilities and renewable energy projects. The latest addition
to its fleet of plants is the Jingqiao Power Plant, which supplies electricity to the
Beijing grid and steam heat to nearby commercial and government facilities.
Dr. Robert Peltier, PE
ne of the primary goals of the Peoples

Republic of Chinas (PRCs) 12th
Five-Year Plan, issued in 2012, is the
expansion of distributed energy sources, including efficient production and use of energy (see Chinas 12th Five-Year Plan Pushes
Power Industry in New Directions in the
January 2012 issue). In Beijing, a series of
corporations were formed to accomplish the
requirements of the Plan.
The Beijing Energy Investment Holding Co., Ltd. (BEIH), wholly owned by the
Municipal Government of Beijing, is the
investment and financing arm for electric
power construction for the city, as well as for
energy conservation, renewable energy, and
other new energy technology investments.
The company also makes investments in real
estate and infrastructure, hi-techs, finance,
and securities. BEIH owns power generation
assets valued at approximately $11 billion
(67.9 billion) with an installed capacity of
over 12.53 GW. One of the BEIH subsid30
iaries is the Beijing Jingneng Clean Energy

Corp. (BJCEC), which is responsible for the
BEIH clean energy business, with the city
of Beijing as its core coverage area. BJCEC
also builds and operates wind, gas-fired, hydropower, and photovoltaic power businesses
in Beijing and other provinces and regions
within the PRC.
Beijing Jingqiao Thermal Power Co., Ltd.
is a subsidiary of BJCEC that generates and
sells heat energy to the Beijing Municipal
Heating Network that is produced by the
Jingqiao Power Plant (JPP). The plant provides thermal energy to 14,580,000 square
meters of commercial and government buildings, which ranks it as one of the largest combined heat and power plants in the world.
Maintenance and inspection services are
performed by contractors selected by competitive bidding. The planning budget for the
project was $549 million, though the project
when completed came in under budget at $470
million. Construction started on May 9, 2011,
www.powermag.com
and passed the 168-hour full load test to go

into commercial operation on Feb. 7, 2013.
Built According to Plan

JPP was built to help meet the ever-rising
demand for power and heating in Beijing.
According to Beijings 12th Five-Year (2011
2015) Plan of Energy, there are four power
and heating centers in Beijing. JPP is the only
power and heating center in southwest Beijing. High plant reliability is required during
the heating months, and that requirement dictated the 2 x 1 plant equipment arrangement.
The plant has many features that produce
high heating capacity, high plant efficiency,
and considerable operating flexibility to ensure a reliable supply of heating steam for the
municipal heating network.
North China Power Engineering Co., Ltd.
provided engineering services and Zhejiang
Thermal Power Co. provided construction services for the 838-MW plant. The two Siemens
SGT5-4000F (290 MW ISO) combustion tur-
TOP PLANTS
1. Flexible turbine operations. The
high-pressure and intermediate-pressure steam

turbines are connected to the low-pressure (LP) condensing turbine via a clutch. When the
steam heating demand is high, the LP clutch allows isolated operation of the HP and IP turbines,
which are on a common shaft. When steam demand is low, the clutch engages the LP condensing turbine for maximum power production. Courtesy: Beijing Jingqiao Thermal Power Co., Ltd.
turbine secured, CTs at full load) is 592 MWt

at 260C. The CTs are normally operated at
baseload when feeding power into the Beijing Municipal Power Corp. grid. Under extreme cold conditions or during an outage of
other steam heating resources, the steam produced by the HRSGs can completely bypass
the steam turbine, be desuperheated, and then
sent directly to the steam heat system. Under
those conditions, the maximum heating capacity of the system is 729 MWt.
The design of JPP is to meet most of the
heating demand of southwest Beijing in extreme cold conditions (very cold weather or
malfunction of other heating resources) and
it is the biggest gas-fired heating center in its
service territory.
Looks Count
bines (CTs) with low-NOx burner technology

were provided by Shanghai Electric Power
Generation Group (SEC PG). Siemens as a
subcontractor of SEC PG provided the core
engines and its SPPA-T3000 control system
for the CTs, the single steam turbine, and coordinated plant operation. Siemens also provided an on-site field technical adviser during
CT installation and commissioning.
Wuxi Huaguang Boiler Co., Ltd. supplied
the two triple-pressure heat-recovery steam
generators (HRSGs) designed to operate at
12.5 MPa with 545C superheat and 540C
reheat temperatures. The HRSG is a vertical
type, with five modules. In between the third
and fourth module is the selective catalytic
reduction catalyst. There is no bypass stack
between the CT and HRSG. The steam production of each HRSG is 512 tons/hr.
NOx production is on par with the best
of the modern generation of gas-fired combined cycle units now being installed around
the world. During the performance test, CT
emissions were under the 25-ppm guarantee.
The denitrification system placed within the
HRSG further reduced NOx by 85%, thereby
producing HRSG stack NOx emission of approximately 4 ppm (7.3 mg/m3).
The steam turbine was manufactured
by Shanghai Turbine Plant, part of SEC
PG. Shanghai Generator Plant, also part
of SEC PG, supplied the three 300-MW
electric generators.
Two Operating Modes

The arrangement of the condensing cycle is
unique. The high-pressure (HP) and inter-
mediate-pressure (IP) steam turbines (on a

common shaft) are connected with its lowpressure (LP) turbine via an overrunning
clutch supplied by SSS Clutch Co., Inc. The
generator is connected at the HP end of the
steam turbine. When operating in full condensing mode (maximum power) the clutch
is fully engaged and the three steam turbines
operate in unison (Figure 1).
On the steam side, HP steam produced by
the HRSG expands through the HP turbine.
Cold reheat steam mixes with the HRSGs
IP steam and enters the reheater to become
the hot reheat steam, which expands through
the IP and then the LP turbine. LP steam, the
third pressure level steam produced by the
HRSG, is mixed with the IP exit steam as it
enters the LP turbine. Steam exits the LP turbine and condenses in the condenser at 0.4
MPa via wet cooling towers. A startup boiler
is used to provide heating steam when the
plant is out of service for maintenance.
When heating steam demand rises, the LP
turbine can be disconnected from the driveline
and secured. The steam exhausting from the
HP and IP turbines that would normally go
to the LP turbine is then directed to the steam
heat system. When steam demand drops, the
steam can be redirected to the LP turbine.
When the LP turbine accelerates up to synchronous speed, the clutch reconnects the LP
turbine to the driveline to produce electricity.
When operating in combined cycle mode
(no steam heating) the plant operates at a
very respectable 59.5% thermal efficiency,
as confirmed during performance tests. The
maximum thermal energy production (LP
www.powermag.com
Making the combined heat and power facility

aesthetically pleasing was a high priority for
its designers, as is evident from the photos.
Because the plant is located within the 4th
Ring Road in Beijing (an eight-lane expressway that circles the city about 8 kilometers
from the center) the view of the plant was
deindustrialized. For example, the building height matches the height of the HRSG
stacks and a noise-reduction wall surrounds
the CT air intake. Also, the steam turbine
building was placed next to an office building
located to the east of the plant as a buffer to
reduce stray equipment noise. The noise level
outside the plant is approximately 45 dB, less
than the noise level found in a typical business office.
The compact plant site also presented a
significant design challenge because sufficient land for another 2 x 1 combined heat
and power plant was set aside. The specific
area of the unit is 0.063 m2/kW, compared to
typical U.S. combined cycle plants that often
use 0.5 m2/kW to 1.0 m2/kW or more.
Did you notice the plant substation is
missing in the lead photo? Its actually located completely underground for aesthetic reasons and because of the constrained site. The
generators enclosed bus ducts are located
3 meters underground and connect with the
main transformers located 9 meters underground. The high-voltage power cables are
connected to the Beijing grid via a channel
located 6 meters beneath the surface. The rest
of the plant is also well hidden from view.
The longest continuous operation of the
plant since entering commercial service was
about 100 days, and that long run was interrupted by order of the grid dispatcher placing the plant into standby mode. The plant
equivalent availability factor was an excellent
82.28% in 2013, its first year of operation.
Dr. Robert Peltier, PE is POWERs

consulting editor.
31
TOP PLANTS
New York University Cogeneration

Plant, New York City
Owner/operator: New York University
Courtesy: Vanderweil Power Group
NYU needed to repower its decades-old cogeneration system and cut emissions at
its main campus in Lower Manhattan. The new gas turbinebased system cut the
universitys energy bills by $5 million a yearand kept it going when Hurricane
Sandy walloped the East Coast.
hen figuring the payback period

on a new power plant, calculations
are almost always done in dollars
and cents: how much it will cost, what will
be saved, and what additional income will
result. More intangible benefits are typically
considered only on the periphery, in part because measuring their value can be difficult.
Sometimes, though, its very easy.
There has perhaps never been a power
plant that proved its worth as quickly as the
new 13.4-MW cogeneration plant at New
York University (NYU), which came online
in early 2011. Thats because, less than two
years later, the city took a body blow from
Hurricane Sandy, which knocked out power
and wrecked utility and generation infrastructure up and down the Atlantic Coast. Much of
New York City was without power for days,
and for weeks in some areas. The lights at
NYU, however, never flickered.
Clean-Up Time
When NYU began looking at upgrading the
1970s-era 7-MW cogeneration system at its
32
Greenwich Village campus, no one was thinking about hurricanes. The impetus instead
came from two factors: The old diesel engine
based system was nearing its end of life, and
the university wanted to support more of the
campuss power, heating, and cooling needs.
The old system had provided power to only
seven of the campuss 70 core buildings, and
only in island modeonly limited backup
from the grid was available in an emergency.
The other impetus came from state air pollution regulators, who had told the university
that it needed to shut down the old system by
the end of 2008, as well as from the New York
Citys PlaNYC Climate Challenge, drafted by
Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007, which
called on the citys universities and colleges
to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2017. That meant either
shutting down altogether or coming up with a
clean, modern, high-efficiency system to replace the old one. The university ultimately
settled on a gas turbinebased plant.
The Vanderweil Power Group was selected to provide design and engineering services
www.powermag.com
for the $125 million project, while Skanska

USA provided construction management.
Like much institutional generation in
densely populated cities, the NYU cogen
plant is located underground, underneath a
plaza at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, about a block from Washington
Square Park.
Construction began in September 2008.
The first step was excavating space for the
new system in front of the building. Because
of the site limitations, the entire system had
to be squeezed into a 200-foot-long vault that
was only 60 feet deep and 40 feet wide. Rigging the gas turbines, heat-recovery steam
generators (HRSGs), and other heavy equipment into the new plant was a challenge in
the narrow, mostly residential streets of
Greenwich Village, but for the experienced
construction crew used to working in the
tight confines of Manhattan, it was largely
business as usual (Figure 1). The project was
completed in January 2011 after 28 months
of construction.
The core of the system consists of two
TOP PLANTS
1. Delicate operation.
One of the Solar Taurus gas turbines is rigged into the narrow
confines of the new NYU cogen plant during construction. Courtesy: Vanderweil Power Group
5.6-MW Solar Taurus 60S dual-fuel gas turbines. Each turbine drives a generator, and
each feeds its own HRSG supplied by Nebraska Boilers.
The 600-psi steam from the HRSGs is put
to a variety of uses. First, its passed through
a 2.4-MW steam turbine generator. The exhaust from the turbine is then fed to another
pair of heat exchangers to make high-temperature hot water and, when necessary, to a
2,400-ton steam-driven chiller to make cold
water for air conditioning. The entire system
is run from a fully digital control system that
maintains peak performance and efficiency
that approaches 80% in normal operation.
The plant is capable of producing 20,000 lb/
hr of steam, and when an auxiliary boiler is
fired up, it can produce another 40,000 lb/hr.
The connection to the Consolidated Edison (ConEd) grid was upgraded with a new
transformer vault and six new transformer
banks. The system includes protective relays
to insulate the microgrid from fluctuations in
the utility grid when necessary.
Though the new system doesnt cover the
entire campus, it supplies power and heat to
much more of it than the old one. Twenty-six
buildings now get electricity from the system, while 37 get their heating from it and 26
get chilled water for cooling. The system is
normally linked to the ConEd grid in a synchronous interconnection, and power flows
back and forth as the campuss loads change.
But it is also capable of disconnecting and
going into island mode, powering the campus on its own.
NYU announced when the plant was complete that it was projected to save the university around $5 million to $8 million a year in
energy-related costs. The new cogen system

would emit 23% lower carbon emissions,
while NOx and particulate emissions were
projected to drop 68% compared to the old
fuel oilfired plant.
The project even gave NYU the opportunity to give that part of the community a facelift. Because the old plaza above the plant
had to be completely removed as part of construction, a new community park was built as
part of the job. The once-generic sidewalks
outside the Courant Institute were turned into
a park-like setting with extensive seating and
gardens filled with native plants (shown in the
header photo). All in all, the project seemed a
highly worthwhile investment.
But the systems real value was yet to
show itself.
Going It Alone
In the fall of 2012, New York City had not
taken a hit from a full-strength hurricane in
more than 25 years. And though there had
been a few near-misses throughout the 20th
century, not since the Long Island Express
hurricane of 1938 had the city seen the sort
of widespread deaths and destruction associated with major storms such as Hurricanes
Katrina and Andrew.
The system that would become Hurricane
Sandy formed in the Caribbean Sea south of
Jamaica in mid-October. It reached hurricane
status on October 24, and over the next few
days, moved north across Jamaica, Cuba, and
the Bahamas, before turning east into the Atlantic. Though it had killed at least 60 people
(mostly in Haiti) by this point, it appeared to
be ready to dissipate.
On October 28, however, the storm comwww.powermag.com
bined with a low-pressure system in the Atlantic, causing it to re-intensify and turn sharply to
the northeastdirectly toward the New York
New Jersey area. The eye of the storm made
landfall the following night about five miles
north of Atlantic City. That location meant the
New York City area to the north would take
much of the brunt of the northwestern edge of
the hurricane, where the strongest winds and
storm surge would be.
Though the 48 deaths and widespread
flooding across the city dominated the headlines, the damage to the citys electric grid was
also immense (ConEd would later estimate
its repair costs at $450 million). Power was
out south of 35th Street in Lower Manhattan
for nearly a week, and it would be more than
a month before electricity was completely restored across the city. Most of New York had
no choice but to wait for repairs.
At NYU, it was a different story.
On the night of Oct. 29th, Sandys storm
surge came over the banks of the East River
and took out ConEds 14th Street substation. When the transformers at the substation explodeda blast that was visible for
milesvoltages throughout Manhattan began dropping rapidly, and the NYU microgrid that had been drawing small amounts of
power from the grid suddenly began sending
dangerous amounts of it out. The protective
relays automatically tripped, disconnecting
from ConEd and putting the microgrid into
island mode as the rest of Lower Manhattan
went dark.
Suddenly finding themselves the sole
source of power and heat for much of the university put the cogen plant staff under considerable stress, since the safety net normally
provided by the ConEd grid was now gone.
The powered portion of the campus rapidly
became an oasis for staff, students, and surrounding community members without electricity; later, it became a command center for
emergency workers throughout Manhattan as
the city struggled to recover.
Under such circumstances, normal working hours went out the window, and the engineers simply did whatever had to be done to
keep things running smoothlywhich they
did. Essential utilities provided by the NYU
microgrid were consistently supplied for the
duration of the Sandy event with no interruptions to key NYU facilities, John Bradley,
NYUs assistant vice president of technical
services told POWER.
For demonstrating the efficiency and reliability gains possible with modern cogeneration and an associated microgrid, NYUs
system is named a POWER Top Plant.
Thomas W. Overton, JD is a POWER

associate editor (@thomas_overton,
@POWERmagazine).
33
TOP PLANTS
Quisqueya I & II, San Pedro de

Macors, Dominican Republic
Owner/operator: Barrick Gold and EGE Haina/EGE Haina
Courtesy: Wrtsil
With a huge gold mine set to increase the load on an already overstressed grid, the
mine owners and a Dominican generation company found a way to power mine
operations and address capacity shortfalls by joining forces on the same project.
ike many countries in the developing

world, the Dominican Republic regularly struggles to meet the energy needs
of its population. Much of the story is familiar: regular blackouts, high costs from inefficient infrastructure, rampant electricity theft,
widespread self-generation, and a dysfunctional utility sector handicapped by a poorly
designed regulatory regime. The nation also
faces challenges common to island nations:
a dependence on expensive imported fossil fuels and an inability to purchase power
from neighboring countries when necessary.
(The Dominican Republic shares the island
of Hispaniola with Haiti, but that countrys
barely functioning electricity sector is in far
worse shape.)
Once entirely state-owned, the Dominican electricity business underwent a process
of privatization and deregulation in the late
1990s and early 2000s, but that ambitious
program has fallen well short of its goals.
The Dominican Electricity Corp. (CDE),
was broken up into a group of generation and
transmission companies, and the sector was
opened to independent producers. Though
the program saw some initial success, with
generation capacity increasing 43% and the
capacity shortfall cut in half in just a few
years, rising oil prices during the 2000s soon
undercut the gains.
Part of the problem has been a convo34
luted system of tariffs and rate-setting

that has created a perverse situation under
which the country sees some of the highest electricity rates in Latin America, yet
the generation companies can lose huge
amounts of money due to an inability to
index rates to the cost of fuel. (An inability to effectively combat electricity theft
and nonpayment has also exacerbated the
situation.) The government has been forced
to make up the difference, with electricity
subsidies constituting a significant portion
of the national budget.
Worse, the privatization process failed
to create a strong national oversight body,
meaning the governments ability to effect
meaningful reform has been handicapped.
CDEs successor, the state-owned Dominican State Electrical Company Corp.
(CDEEE), which owns the grid (much of
it was renationalized in 2003) and oversees
power purchase agreements with independent producers, is supposed to work with
the Secretary of Electricity and the National
Energy Commission (CNE), but in practice
there are no mechanisms for enforcement of
policy recommendations.
Though various attempts at reform have
been made, to date there has been little progress in addressing the overall electricity crisis. And, though there has been a push toward
diversificationtwo large coal plants are unwww.powermag.com
der developmentthe Dominican Republic

still gets the largest share of its power (about
40%) from fuel oil. And despite the endemic
problems, power demand has been growing
at 5% annually.
All of this has left private companies and
generators to meet their power needs as best
they can.
Striking Gold
San Pedro de Macors is a city of about
200,000 on the countrys southern coast,
about 50 miles east of the capital, Santo Domingo. Beginning in 1975, the government
operated a large gold mine northwest of the
city, but it was abandoned in 1991 after falling gold prices made it uneconomic. In 2001,
the government invited tenders to reopen the
mine, and the contract was eventually won
by Canadian firm Placer Dome, which was
acquired by Toronto-based mining giant Barrick Gold in 2006. Barrick partnered 60/40
with fellow Canadian company Goldcorp
to develop the mine, now known as Pueblo
Viejo, and the two firms would ultimately
spend $4 billion on the project.
But in addition to equipment, mining infrastructure, and environmental remediation,
the new mine had one key need that had to be
met: power. And the national grid was simply
not reliable enough to support the operation
Barrick wanted to run.
From advanced-technology
generating plants to
environmental retrots,
weve got you covered.
Skanska provides turnkey EPC services and strong labor relationships to
make your next project a success.
usa.skanska.com
TOP PLANTS
San Pedro de Macors typifies the challenges facing the nation as a whole. The city
gets much of its power from a 153-MW floating engine plant supplied by Wrtsil. More
than once, the plant has been forced to shut
down when its owner, EGE Hainaone of
the firms spun off from CDEwas unable to
pay its fuel bills.
EGE Haina, the nations largest generator by installed capacity, needed to expand
its generation in the area as well. That would
soon lead to an unusual partnership, one that
would eventually build the largest power
plant in the Caribbean, the largest plant ever
delivered by Wrtsil, and one of the largest
engine plants in the world.
1. Two plants, one site. The
Quisqueya I and II plants in the Dominican Republic are

nominally separate but operate as one. Both plants send power to the national grid, though
Quisqueya I primarily supports the nearby Pueblo Viejo gold mine. Waste heat recovery systems
on the two plants each drive a steam turbine generator that supplements power from the engines. Courtesy: EGE Haina
Double or Nothing
In 2011, Barrick approached Wrtsil about
building a gas engine plant that would support operations at Pueblo Viejo. Barrick
which had previously purchased two other
plants from Wrtsilneeded a highly reliable, low-maintenance solution that would
function efficiently in the hot, humid tropical environment. Wrtsil already had significant experience developing plants in the
Dominican Republic, with a total of 900
MW of generation then in operation (including EGE Hainas barge plant). It proposed a
plant based on its combined cycle Flexicycle
design employing its 18V50DF engines.
The dual-fuel, 17.1-MW 18V50DF, introduced in 2007, has been deployed in both
marine and power generation applications.
It can run on natural gas and light or heavy
fuel oil, and can change fuels on the fly.
When operating on gas, it has an extremely
low emissions profile. In Flexicycle configuration, the engine exhaust is directed
through a heat-recovery steam generator,
and the steam is used to drive a steam turbine. Flexicycle plants can achieve efficiencies approaching those of gas turbine
combined cycle plants and can maintain that
high efficiency across their full operating
range (unlike gas turbines).
In September 2011, Barrick and Wrtsil signed a turnkey contract to deliver a
215-MW Flexicycle plant at Pueblo Viejo
comprising 12 18V50DF engines and an associated steam cycle.
EGE Haina had already been in discussions with Barrick about how the mines
large power needs would affect the local grid.
When plans for the new plant began taking
shape, EGE Hainas management realized
the efficiencies and savings that could be captured by joining the project. In December, it
signed a separate turnkey contract with Wrtsil for a nearly identical plant on the same
site. Thus, the single 215-MW plant became
a parallel two-unit 430-MW project, the larg36
est Wrtsil had ever delivered.

The combined plant would cost about
$700 million, with Barrick and EGE Haina
each contributing $350 million (again, via
separate contracts). That figure represented
almost a third of the total energy infrastructure investment in the Dominican Republic
over the previous 13 years, according to government data.
Construction and Commissioning

Site work started in February 2012. The initial plan was for a four-month gap between
the two projects, but delays in permitting
meant that both plants had to be constructed
on a very similar time schedule. The shift in
schedule meant that a large number of tasks
had to be carried out in parallel, and the engine halls had to be built more or less simultaneously. This created a more crowded job
site, which put extra pressure on site supervision and workers.
The simple cycle system was completed in
the summer of 2013. Performance tests began in September, and the completed plants
were handed over in December. Construction peaked at 1,400 workers; approximately
3.5 million man-hours were put in by final
completion.
Quisqueya I is owned by Barrick, while
Quisqueya II is owned by EGE Haina, but
the plants function more or less as one, from
a single control room operated by EGE Haina
personnel. Quisqueya I powers the Pueblo
Viejo minewhich reached commercial
production shortly before the plant was completewith excess electricity flowing to the
www.powermag.com
grid; Quisqueya II delivers power solely to

the grid. About 150 workers are employed at
the site (Figure 1).
The startup of the Quisqueya plants had an
immediate impact on the Dominican energy
market. The CNE announced shortly afterward that Quisqueyas generation had caused
a 30% drop in spot prices for electricity, from
$0.20/kWh to $0.14/kWh. This resulted in
significant savings to both end users and
CDEEE, which purchases up to 20% of its
power on the spot market.
In addition, the large size of the facility,
as well as the high flexibility of an enginebased plant, means Quisqueya is also capable
of providing frequency support for the national grid.
Though the plants are initially being run
on fuel oil, they will switch over to natural
gas as soon as reliable supplies are available. Over the long term, it is hoped that
fuel for the plant will come from a liquefied
natural gas import terminal being proposed
for San Pedro de Macors. This would supply not just the Quisqueya plants but also
several other plants in the area that are under construction or planned for conversion
to gas firing.
For leveraging a public-private partnership to supply badly needed generation and
frequency support as well as supporting an
important industrial project in a difficult development environment, Quisqueya is a deserving Top Plant.

@POWERmagazine).
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TOP PLANTS
Ulsan 4 Combined Cycle Power

Plant, Ulsan Metropolitan City,
South Korea
Owner/operator: Korean East-West Power Co., Ltd.
Courtesy: Korea East-West Power Co., Ltd.
Combined cycle plants have the advantages of being extremely efficient and can be
built in two phases when power needs peak unexpectedly. Ulsan 4 was built in response to the countrys 2011 power crisis for both reasons. The first task was installation of the combustion turbines in time to meet the 2013 summer peak demand.
The steam plant portion of the project was completed a year later.
Dr. Robert Peltier, PE
he Republic of Koreas (South Koreas)

electricity consumption has grown an average of 5% annually over the past decade,
and the nation remains the worlds ninth-largest
energy consumer (based on 2011 data). South
Korea also imports about 97% of the fuel used
to produce its electricity because of a lack of
indigenous fuel sources. Economic growth is
largely determined by exports, which again are
driven by a reliable supply of electricity. South
Koreas GDP is expected to grow 3.8% in 2014
as exports continue to rise.
The countrys energy needs heavily rely on
nuclear, coal, and gas-fired generation. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports, nearly doubling over the past decade, fuel the tremendous
growth in high-efficiency combined cycle
plants. South Koreas four nuclear power stations (with 23 individual reactors) provide up
to about 30% of the countrys electricity and
were slated to provide about half of the countrys capacity by 2024, according to its Fifth
Basic Plan for Long-Term Electricity Supply
38
and Demand, finalized in late 2010. However,

South Koreas nuclear industry experienced a
dramatic slowdown in its expansion plans after Japans Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
in March 2011, followed by revelation of falsified nuclear construction certificates for parts
used in 20 operating reactors in 2012. The
governments latest long-term electricity plan
(released at the end of 2013) adjusted its goal
for the nuclear share of South Koreas generation down to 29% by 2035.
The loss of nuclear capacity put further
downward pressure on the countrys reserve
margins, which have remained below 10%
since 2006, causing power shortages in parts
of the country and an increased reliance on imported fossil fuels, principally LNG. On Sept.
15, 2011, the Korean Power Exchange was
forced, for the first time, to use rolling blackouts to stabilize its system as reserve margins
dipped to dangerously low levels during a
summer heat wave. The day has been memorialized in the country as the 915 blackout.
www.powermag.com
Shortly after the blackout, the government

quickly approved construction of several new
high-efficiency combined cycle plants. An expected 5,060 MW of new gas-fired combined
cycles are planned for commissioning by the
end of 2017. South Korea is also considering
building six new coal-fired plants with a total
capacity of 10,740 MW, starting in 2018 and
extending through 2020 under the new power
supply plan. (For more on the countrys energy
challenges, see South Korea Walks an Energy
Tightrope in the November 2013 issue.)
Fast-Track Project
Korea East-West Power Co., Ltd. (EWP) is
a wholly owned power generation company
that was spun off from the government-owned
(51%), vertically integrated Korean Electric
Power Corp. (KEPCO) in April 2001. EWP is
one of the five non-nuclear generation companies in South Korea. It currently provides about
11.1% of the countrys electricity consumption
and has an installed capacity of 8,948 MW.
TOP PLANTS
EWPs response to its regional power
shortages was to quickly begin development
of the 947.5-MW Ulsan 4 combined cycle
plant at its existing 8-acre coastal site in
Ulsan Metropolitan City, on the coast about
400 kilometers southeast of Seoul. The site
consists of 3 x 200-MW and 3 x 400-MW
heavy oilfired conventional steam plants
built between 1970 and 1981the last of the
large-scale oil-fired units built by KEPCO.
Oil currently accounts for less than 5% of the
countrys generation mix.
Government approvals for the construction
of Ulsan 4 were quickly obtained. However,
EWP was under pressure to get additional capacity constructed prior to the 2013 summer
peak period. In May 2012, EWP began constructing the first phase of the projectthe
simple cycle portion of the new 2 x 1 combined cycle plant. The combustion turbines
entered commercial service on July 13, 2013,
18 days before the original targeted completion date.
Construction of the steam bottoming plant
(heat-recovery steam generators [HRSGs] and
steam turbine) began on Aug. 15, 2013. The
project took only eight months for the planning
and permitting phase and 27 months for construction of the entire project. The overall cost
of the project was approximately $800 million.
During the first year of operation, the
simple cycle combustions turbines (CTs) operated in peaking mode. The completed combined cycle plant finished full load testing on
June 15, 2014, and began commercial service

on July 31.
High-Efficiency Turbine
The consortium of Marubeni Corp., Daelim
Industrial, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
(MHI) received an order for engineering, procurement, and delivery of the equipment as
well as the construction and installation work
for Ulsan 4. MHI supplied its 317.5-MW
M501J CTs, the single steam turbine, as well
as three Mitsubishi Electric 60-Hz generators.
Daelim Industrial delivered two triple-pressure
plus reheat HRSGs manufactured by Sedae
Enertech in addition to other balance-of-plant
equipment. The consortium delivered this
equipment to Daelim Industrial, which was responsible for construction of the plant. KEPCO
E&C also provided engineering services, while
EWP provided project management of the entire project.
The MHI M501J CTs are a 1,600C
(2,912F)-class design that produces (in a 2 x
1 combined cycle) 947.5 MW when burning
LNG, with an industry-leading 61.9% thermal efficiency (lower heating value). MHI
claims this is the worlds highest level [efficiency] in GTCC applications.
The CTs are configured with a steamcooled, can-annular, dry low-NOx combustion system. A selective catalytic reduction
system located within the HRSG further reduces the NOx emissions to 10 ppm or less,
five times lower than the Korean national
1. Two-phase project. The need for summer peaking capacity required the Ulsan Unit 4
project to be constructed in two phases. The first phase was completed with the commissioning of the two combustion turbines (shown here) on July 13, 2013. The second phase added the
heat-recovery steam generators and single steam turbine to complete the 947.5-MW combined
cycle plant on July 31, 2014. Courtesy: Korea East-West Power Co., Ltd.
standard of 50 ppm. (For more information

on the test and development of the M501J,
see The T-Point Plant: The Ultimate Validation Test, in the June 2011 issue).
Operation of the simple cycle CTs during construction of the HRSG-steam turbine
system was made possible by inserting a
blanking plate in the ductwork and using a
temporary bypass stack. When the HRSGs
were commissioned, the bypass stack and
blanking plate were removed and the ductwork to the HRSG was installed.
The two CTs and the steam turbine are
installed within an enclosed building for
weather protection and to be aesthetically
pleasing (Figure 1).
A total of 13 M501J CTs have been recently purchased by South Korean utilities for
five different sites (including Ulsan) because
of the models excellent performance, efficiency, and positive customer reports. A total of 30 units have been ordered worldwide
with 10 units now in service.
Keys to Success
The success of the Ulsan 4 project is due in
part to EWPs project management skills, according to Soon Gu Doh, manager of EWPs
construction and engineering division. EWP
uses advanced computer-based tools to manage every detail of the project, such as its
Integrated Management System of Design
Verification and its EWP Project Management System (e-PMS). The former is used
for removing construction interferences with
the help of 3-D design data. The partnership
and EWP used e-PMS to share information
quickly and accurately.
EWPs project management team was responsible for developing creative and costeffective means to reduce the cost and risks
found in a project of this scale. For example,
a Construction Innovation Center was established to value engineer the project. Also,
the Preemptive Risk Management (PreRM) team was formed to identify ways to
reduce operational risks based on EWPs experience with plant operations.
No safety incidents occurred during construction of the plant, which is significant
given the short construction schedule and
very constrained site conditions. One safety
tool used by EWP was the Loughborough
University Safety Climate Assessment Toolkit developed by the UK Health and Safety
Administration to gauge the safety climate of
a project and aid the promotion of a positive
safety culture. EWP also successfully used
safety awareness systems on the construction site, such as Keeper of the Construction
Site and 2 Strike Out System.
Dr. Robert Peltier, PE is POWERs

consulting editor.
www.powermag.com
39
WATER
Boiler Chemical Cleaning:

Doing It Correctly
Like some of those tests your doctor is always after you to get, boiler chemical cleaning is something that most of us would rather not think about
but that we all agree is necessary. Adding to our general discomfort with
the process are new Environmental Protection Agency regulations, which
make the disposal of chemical cleaning wastes more expensive. Here is a
review of what to do, when, and some things to watch out for.
David Daniels
veryone knows (or should know) that

boiler tubes containing deposits create
long-term reliability problems for the
boiler. Deposits insulate the water in the tubes
from the fire, causing the metal temperature
to increase dramatically between the deposit
and the tube metal. Long-term overheating of
the metal will result from prolonged operation with heavy tube deposits. The tubes will
first bulge and then fail. Because the deposits
tend to be widespread, this generally means
that large sections of boiler tubing will be
damaged and require replacement.
The deposits also concentrate any boiler
water chemistry and contamination that collects under them. The increased metal temperature caused by the deposit increases the rate
of corrosion caused by any phosphate, caustic,
or chloride underneath the deposit. With the
exception of corrosion fatigue, all the waterside boiler tube failure mechanisms occur under deposits. Get rid of the deposits and you
also stop the water-side tube failures.
Determining When to Clean

The standard method for determining when
to chemically clean a boiler is to take a
boiler tube sample and have the deposit
amount measureda deposit weight density
(DWD)and the composition of the deposit
analyzed. But there are other conditions besides the DWD that require that the boiler be
cleaned. These include:
40
One or more failures due to an under-deposit

corrosion mechanism, particularly hydrogen
damage. The first priority must be to prevent
further damage by removing the deposits via
a complete chemical cleaning.
Major contamination event or multiple
small events, particularly condenser tube
leaks. Contamination events increase the
amount of deposit in the boiler and its corrosiveness. Chemical cleaning removes the
deposits and the contamination underneath

the deposits before they corrode to failure.
Replacement of boiler tubing. The rule of
thumb is to chemically clean if you are
replacing more than 10% of the surface
area of the boiler. This helps to create a
uniform layer of oxide on all the tubes.
A major change in the boiler fuel or burner design. Changing fuels, such as from
coal to gas, or modification of the burners
can result in changes to the area of high
heat flux in the boiler. When implementing such a major change, it is best to start
with a clean boiler.
A change in the chemical treatment regime.
Such changes would include moving from
one chemical treatment to another, say
from all-volatile treatment to oxygenated
treatment (OT).
Using Deposit Weight Density to

Determine When to Clean
The standard DWD test should not only provide a deposit loading but also an analysis of
chemical composition of the deposit on the
tube. This chemical analysis of the deposit can
be done quantitatively, using an inductively
coupled plasma emission spectrometer (ICPES), but it is more commonly determined
semi-quantitatively using electron dispersion
spectroscopy (EDS). Occasionally, X-ray diffraction data is also provided to indicate the
chemical compounds that are present.
Optimally, the tube sample for DWD
should be about 18 inches long and from the
highest heat flux area of the boiler. This is
typically above the burners or on the underside of the nose arch. The idea is to find the
tube in the boiler with the most deposit in a
high-heat area. You cannot use a tube that has
failed, because some or all of the deposit will
have been removed by the failure.
DWD is determined by removing the deposit in a carefully measured area of the tube.
www.powermag.com
The tube is split and the deposit on the firefacing (hot) side is analyzed separately from
the insulation-facing (cold) side. As far as
chemical cleaning is concerned, the side that
counts is the hot side.
The change in the weight of the tube divided by the water-touched area where the
deposit was removed produces the DWD
result. This can be expressed in gram/ft2 or
gram/meter2 (g/m2, SI, International System
of Units). The conversion is 1 g/ft2 is equal
to 10.76 g/m2.
Currently, the most common method of
deposit removal for the DWD test is beadblasting with glass beads (NACE TM019999). The other method that is occasionally
used is to dissolve the deposits in a solvent,
typically, inhibited hydrochloric acid, HCl
(ASTM D3483-83 [2005] Test Method B). In
general, the solvent method produces slightly higher DWD results on the same tube, as
some small amount of metal is removed with
the deposit.
When bead-blasting the tube, a layer of
deposits often will become visible, such as
a layer of copper. A good DWD report will
describe and show any anomalies found as
the deposit was removed.
Best practice is to grab a tube sample from
the boiler during each major outage or at least
one every two years. Each sample should be
from a similar elevation or area in the boiler.
Comparing the DWD results from year to
year shows the deposits are accumulating in
the boiler and can be used to anticipate the
need to chemically clean, though the deposit
formation is rarely linear. Figure 1 presents
a chart with chemical cleaning recommendations by boiler operating pressure.
There are three general recommendations
on this figure. If the DWD result is in the
top area, a chemical cleaning should be performed as soon as it can be scheduled. The
lowest area represents a relatively clean tube.
WATER
1. To clean or not to clean? For cleaning with the bead blast
method, this chart shows the recommended parameters for immediate and near-term cleaning. Source: EPRI
60
55
50
45
40
g/ft2
35
Cleaning recommended this outage
30
25
Committed to
moving your
performance
forward
20
Plan cleaning for next outage
15
10
No cleaning needed
5
0
1,500
1,700
1,800
1,900
2,100
2,300
2,500
psig
2,700
2,900
3,100
3,300
3,500
The middle area between the green and red line indicates that deposits
are beginning to accumulate to the point where cleaning should be
considered and probably budgeted for the next major outage or within
the next two years. If that is the case, grab another tube sample close
to the next outage and see if the DWD has increased and is close to or
in the Cleaning recommended area. If not, you may be able to get
by for another year or two.
Although the heat flux in a heat-recovery steam generator (HRSG)
is far lower, the circulation issues can be far greater due to the multiple assemblies and configuration with the drum. So the industry has
applied close to the same DWD criteria for cleaning for an HRSG as
for a conventional fossil-fired unit.
As a general rule, the DWD criteria for HRSG tubes is about 20%
higher than for a conventional boiler.
Occasionally, a utility will want to take multiple tube samples and
have them analyzed. In these cases, the DWD result that should be
used to determine the need to chemically clean is the tube that is the
most heavily deposited. Remember, what you are trying to determine
is if there is sufficient deposit anywhere in the boiler to cause underdeposit corrosion or overheating. You are not trying to determine the
average amount of deposit in the whole boiler or even the average in
the high-heat area. One isolated area of hydrogen damage or overheated tubes is enough to cause a number of forced outages or extend
a planned outage, and certainly reason enough to chemically clean.
If the DWD results indicate the need to chemically clean, now is
the time to do it. Procrastination with cleaning is detrimental on a
number of levels.
First and foremost is the damage done to the tubes. Under-deposit
corrosion rates and long-term overheat damage are exponential, not
linear. A delay of one or two years on a dirty boiler can result in major
tube damage.
Second, you dont save as much as you think. Cleaning a very dirty
boiler is significantly more expensive than cleaning a boiler that has just
crossed into that Cleaning recommended region. The additional costs
in solvent (see sidebar), time to get the tubes clean, multiple cleaning
steps, startup delays, and dealing with excessive amounts of cleaning
wastes are all consequences of postponing a needed cleaning.
So you need to clean; now what?
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Planning for a Cleaning

The first decision is what solvent to clean with. There are five commonly used cleaning solvents. Each has advantages and disadvantages. If you have been operating a plant for awhile, you may simply go
with the solvent and procedure you used last time. But it is worth a
www.powermag.com
41
WATER
Gun-shy About Chemical Cleaning?

Some plants have had bad experiences
with chemical cleanings and so are reluctant to go through that process again.
They fear that the cleaning process will
turn their boiler into a sprinkler system.
The solvents used in chemical cleaning are designed to minimize the corrosion of base tube metal anywhere
in the boiler. When properly applied
by experienced cleaning vendors, the
amount of base metal removed is very
small. The vast majority of the iron that
is dissolved by the cleaning solvent
originally came in from the condenser,
feedwater heaters, deaerator and associated pipingnot from the boiler
tubes themselves.
In some cases, the cleaning process
removes the deposit that was preventing
a noticeable tube leak. If the cleaning
look to see if this timedue to the chemical
composition of the deposit, or for a variety
of reasons, including waste-handling costs
another solvent might be better suited.
Cleaning boilers that have been using
oxygenated treatment can be a particular
challenge, as the oxide is very tenacious and
slow to dissolve. If you have been using OT,
and this is the first time you will be cleaning
the boiler after starting OT, you will want to
discuss the process with other units that have
already cleaned their OT units to get the benefit of their experience.
The solvents discussed below are primarily for the iron removal stage. Another set of
chemicals is used specifically to remove copper in separate copper stages.
Inhibited Hydrochloric Acid. Inhibited
HCl is still used, particularly in boilers where
it is difficult to ensure complete circulation
of the solvent. It is very effective at removing
silica deposits from the tubes if ammonium
bifluoride is added.
It is definitely not recommended on boilers
with a history of corrosion fatigue failures, as
it has been shown to increase the failure rate
following a cleaning.
If there is any copper in the boiler deposit,
provision must be made for removing the
copper, which will otherwise plate-out on the
bare steel tube.
In the past, thiourea was commonly added
to complex the copper, and it is still used occasionally. There have been times on some
boilers where the thiourea has been inadequate to remove copper in very localized
areas of the boiler, and this causes problems.
42
had not occurred, the leak would have

still happened.
Depending on the solvent and the size
of the leak, a cleaning may be able to
proceed anyway. Efforts will have to be
made to contain and collect the leaking
solvent.
In other cases, the leak is so bad that
the cleaning has to be terminated and
the solvent drained to effect a tube repair.
Dealing with leaks during a cleaning
can be difficult, but the alternative
leaving the deposit on the boiler tubes
for another year or twoguarantees
that the under-deposit corrosion will
continue. So, not only that tube, but
also many of its neighbors, will eventually leak during operation, leading to
repeated forced outages.
There may also be environmental ramifications for using this chemical when attempting to dispose of the cleaning wastes. For
these reasons, a separate copper-removal
stage is often recommended before or after
(or both) the acid stage, using a variety of
copper-removal solvents.
The use of HCl can create problems on
heavily deposited boilers, as the acid often
undercuts the deposits and causes sloughing of larger pieces of material that can plug
drains. Removing the acid when time is up
is critical.
Hydroxyacetic Acid. Hydroxyacetic acid
is used in boilers with stainless steel components that will be in the cleaning path where
any chloride in the solvent could create a
problem. This solvent is often used in supercritical and once-through boilers. It does not
remove copper, but this is usually not an issue in these boilers.
EDTA. Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid
(EDTA) is probably the most commonly used
operational cleaning chemical. For forcedcirculation boilers, the use of diammonium
EDTA is practically a standard practice. The
low temperature requirement (180F) of the
diammonium EDTA plus the general safety
and ease of handling the solvent during the
cleaning process are all substantial advantages. The disadvantages may come when trying
to dispose of the cleaning wastes..
For natural circulation boilers, tetraammonium EDTA (pH 9) is still used. The boiler has
to be heated to 275F to 300F and repeatedly
heated and cooled during the cleaning process.
EDTA has some capacity to dissolve and
www.powermag.com
retain copper in solution when the chemistry

of the EDTA is changed and the iron in solution is oxidized. This is generally done at the
end of the iron stage of the EDTA cleaning
process by the addition of oxygen gas. If there
is excessive copper in the deposits, a separate
copper-removal step may be required.
EDTA is the most tolerant solvent and particularly good on tubes that are heavily deposited with iron oxides, or where the iron deposits
are particularly tenacious, as the cleaning can
be extended for a long time without risking
any damage to the tubes (unlike HCl).
Ammoniated Citric Acid. Ammoniated
citric acid is an excellent solvent and is often
the solvent of choice for pre-commissioning
cleanings, where deposits are anticipated to
be light and composed exclusively of iron. It
can also be used in a high-temperature (higher pH) and low-temperature (lower pH) scenario, like EDTA. Chemical cleaning wastes
containing citric acid are often easier to dispose of than EDTA-containing wastes.
Inhibited Hydrofluoric Acid. Inhibited
hydrofluoric acid (HF) is commonly used in
Europe and elsewhere around the world, but
rarely in North America. The stigma to its use
in the U.S. is the very serious personnel risks
associated with concentrated HF. However,
when diluted to concentrations typically used
in the cleaning process, HF is considered no
more hazardous than an HCl solvent.
HF is fastprobably the fastest cleaning
solventand very effective in removing iron
and any silica in the deposits. The potential
for exposure to the concentrated acid is limited to the time when the HF is diluted in
preparation for adding it to the boiler. This
is handled by the chemical cleaning vendor,
who is aware of the risks and whose personnel are properly protected with personal
protective equipment while transferring the
concentrated acid.
Neutralization of the waste is typically
done with lime slurry, which neutralizes the
acid and precipitates calcium fluoride and
iron hydroxide.
Selecting a Chemical Cleaning

Service Company
There are a number of excellent chemical cleaning companies with diligent and experienced
personnel. Be sure that the vendor you select
has experience dealing with boilers that are
your size and configuration. Also confirm that
the firm has experience using the solvent you
have selected. Ask for and check references.
Occasionally, service companies that clean
small package boilers bid on a bigger utility
boiler. There is as much difference between
cleaning an industrial fire-tube boiler and a
large utility boiler as there is building a house
and a skyscraper. Just because you are a good
WATER
house builder doesnt mean you are qualified
to build a multi-story office tower.
Cleaning vendors also have expertise in
helping you select the solvent or solvents
(with copper deposits) that will clean the
boiler. They should ask for a tube sample to
test in their small cleaning rig (in their lab)
and prove that the cleaning program you have
agreed on really does the job.
Solvent costs are a significant portion of
the cost of the cleaning job. There is no way
to accurately predict the amount of solvent
that will be required to clean a boiler. There
are some general rules of thumb, but remember that these estimates are often based
on a single tube sample. The deposit in any
boiler is not uniform from top to bottom or
even from tube to tube, so the estimate of the
amount of deposit (and amount of solvent required) is really more of a guess. Past cleaning history and years since the last cleaning
often provide a better guide than the current
tube sample (or at least should be a factor in
the decision of how much solvent to bring).
When comparing prices from multiple vendors, select an amount and base all the bids
on the same amount of solvent. This is particularly the case with EDTA. After awarding
the bid, be sure that the vendor has extra sol-
vent (50% extra is common) either on-site or

very close to the plant, so that it can be used
if needed. Many a cleaning has been delayed
hours, if not days, while waiting for more
chemical to arrive from the supplier.
Get Some Help

Particularly as the time between chemical
cleanings increases (because you are taking
better care of the boiler chemistryright?),
and with normal turnover, your plant staff
may have little or no experience with a
chemical cleaning. There are a number of
consulting engineers who either specialize
in, or offer as one of their services, support
of the chemical cleaning process, acting as
the owners engineer and project manager.
Their help can be invaluable in keeping the
communication channel open between the
cleaning vendor and your operations, maintenance, and management staff and in helping
at critical decision points in the process.
A Good Procedure
There are few things more important to
a smooth chemical cleaning than a wellthought-out and well-documented cleaning
procedure. This will require the time and effort of the plants operation and engineering
staff to customize and prepare a cleaning procedure for each unit.

Cleaning vendors can provide a general
outline of the cleaning process, and a consulting engineer can help also, but your operators know where the valves are and which
leak-by and which dont. There will be three
classes of valves: those that stay closed the
entire cleaning process, those that must stay
open the entire process, and those that need
to be opened and closed, depending on where
you are in the cleaning process.
There are also valves that the cleaning
vendor will be responsible for opening and
closing, such as those going to the waste
disposal (frac) tanks and chemical injection
points. Each valve that comes in contact
with the solvent (or potentially could come
in contact with the solvent) needs to fall into
one of these groups and be tagged accordingly. Be on particular lookout for possible
contamination routes where the solvent can
get to a place where it was not designed to
go. If a contamination route would be very
serious, can a blank flange be installed? If
not, can a telltale be set up to provide early
detection of contamination?
One more aspect of deciding when to
clean is the actual schedulingdetermining
www.powermag.com
43
WATER
whether a plant should clean at the beginning, during, or at the end of an outage.
Chemically cleaning at any point except
the very end of an outage leaves the tubes
vulnerable to some general corrosion. The
passivation step at the end of the chemical
cleaning is generally neither long enough
nor at a high enough temperature to create
a robust protective layer. It is often difficult
to ensure that the boiler gets really dry after
the cleaning or can be laid-up properly in
a wet condition. The superheater is always
back-filled during cleaning to minimize the
risk of contamination. So, unless it can be
drained and dried, this area will remain wet
until the unit is fired sufficiently to dry it
out. Therefore, the typical recommendation
is to perform the chemical cleaning at the
very end of an outage.
Heating the boiler for chemical cleaning
using an auxiliary boiler or steam from another unit adds complexity and cost to the
cleaning. So, as a rule, it is best to wait until
the unit can be warmed using its own burners
or igniters and when the fans and instrumentation associated with the fuel system (such
as flame scanners) are working properly and
have been fully tested. Many a utility has
waited for days with the chemical cleaning
vendor on site and ready to go while its staff
tried to get a fire in the boiler. For this reason,
some utilities have decided not to schedule
chemical cleanings during an outage at all;
instead, they take a weekend outage separate
from the overhaul for this purpose.
Similarly, pre-commissioning cleanings
are optimally performed as close to the steam
blow as possible, to minimize the opportunity for corrosion to undo what was just done
with the cleaning.
The Actual Cleaning Process

Once the boiler is at the proper temperature,
the actual cleaning process can take between
16 and 72 hours to fully remove all the iron.
The shortest times are for the mineral acids
(HF and HCl); complex-forming solvents
such as EDTA require longer times.
The important thing is to make sure all deposits have been removed during the cleaning
and that the chemistry has stabilized. With
HCl, the inhibitor that prevents the acid from
aggressively attacking the metal surface has
a finite time that it can protect the metal once
it is in the boiler. Therefore, with this solvent, the cleaning solution must be drained
before the inhibitor breaks down, whether all
the deposit is removed or not. This has been
a problem in some boilers that were heavily
deposited, where drains have plugged, not
allowing the boiler to drain and resulting in
general acidic attack of the tubes.
In forced circulation boilers, one critical
44
2. Frac tanks lined up for chemical cleaning. Courtesy: M&M Engineering
piece is the flow of purge water through the

boiler circulation pump motors. This purge
water protects components in the motor
from the solvents, by providing a constant
outward flow past the motor cavity and
into the boiler. Purge water should be on
all boiler circulation pumps (in service
or not) as long as there is chemical in the
boiler. Since the purge water is designed to
provide water to the pump during normal
operation, the system is set up to overcome
normal boiler pressure. These high-pressure pumps can produce high purge water
flow rates during the cleaning and can be
difficult to control. If the purge water flow
is excessive, the level in the boiler is constantly rising to the point where solvent has
to be drained before it goes out of sight in
the temporary sight glass. Every gallon of
purge water dilutes the solvent and generates more waste that will need to be disposed of at the end of the cleaning.
Some utilities set up a separate purge water system with pressure controllers and flow
meters just for the cleaning that can constantly
provide a slight positive purge water flow during the cleaning process. This system can pay
for itself many times over in a single cleaning.
Once the chemistry in the boiler indicates
that the boiler is clean, next is a passivation
step. In the case of HCl, passivation is preceded by rinses and neutralization of any remaining acid in the boiler. In the case of EDTA,
passivation occurs after cooling the boiler to
160F and after the pH of the solvent is raised
with ammonia (for diammonium EDTA) when
oxygen is added. This also complexes any remaining copper on the boiler tubes.
www.powermag.com
The degree to which the boiler tube surfaces

are truly passivated is a function of the solvent,
the procedure, and the time and temperature at
which the passivation is performed.
What to Expect After Cleaning

When the cleaning is finished, the chemical
cleaning solvent is rapidly and completely
drained from the unit. Usually, two full boiler volume rinses follow, with partial rinses
in addition to these in some cases. Conductivity is used as an indicator to see how
well the solvent has been removed from the
boiler. In some cases, the last rinse is treated
with chemical to raise the pH to a normal
boiler pH range, and the boiler is fired to
180F to 200F so that it can be drained hot
and dried out.
As noted above, optimally, the boiler will
be started as soon as rinses are complete and
the normal boiler piping can be restored. Depending on the design of the boiler, it may be
difficult to flush out all the iron oxides that
were released by the cleaning but were not
fully dissolved. This can contribute to black
water samples and high iron levels in the
boiler following the cleaning. Some utilities have used boiler dispersants for a time to
promote the suspension and removal of any
remaining deposits in the boiler through the
normal drum blowdown.
Dealing with the BCCW

There will typically be between three and
four boiler volumes of chemical cleaning
wastes (BCCW), which includes the solvent
and all rinses following a chemical cleaning.
The waste and rinses are temporarily stored
We see what you cant.

WATER
in frac tanks located at the site prior to the
start of the cleaning (Figure 2). Before this
waste can be dealt with, it must be characterized to determine if it is considered hazardous or nonhazardous under the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
The strongly acidic cleaning wastes are
generally neutralized as they leave the boiler,
and then that waste is combined with neutralization and passivation steps and rinses to
produce a combined waste that is not characteristically hazardous for pH. The other chemical cleaning solvents are not characteristically
hazardous by pH to begin with.
The other way that a BCCW can be classified as a hazardous waste is if it contains
a concentration of one of the RCRA 8 toxic
metals. The primary metal that is of concern
is chromium. Chromium comes from stainless steel feedwater heater and condenser
tubes. This accumulates in deposits in the
boiler. The regulation is specifically aimed
at hexavalent chromium. Normally, utilities
measure total chromium first, and only address the hexavalent chromium issue if the
total chromium is greater than the RCRA
limit of 5 ppm.
EDTA solubilizes chromium in a reduced
trivalent chrome (Cr III) state, and it is not
sufficiently oxidized by oxygen in the pas-
sivation stage of the cleaning to create a significant amount of the hexavalent chromium.
Some utilities have gone to their state environmental agencies with analytical data showing
that there is very little hexavalent chromium
in their BCCW, even if the total chrome is
greater than 5 ppm, and have sought and received an exemption for this waste so that it
can be classified as nonhazardous.
For many years utilities have utilized an
exemption provided by the Bevill Amendment and a subsequent letter from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to group
BCCW with other wastes that were uniquely
associated with coal-fired utilities (such as
fly ash and bottom ash) and treat them as exempt from hazardous waste regulations. This
allowed the comingling of BCCW with fly
ash or bottom ash and disposal in the ash pile
without first having to determine if they were
characteristically hazardous.
In May 2000, the EPA made a regulatory
determination that moved BCCW from the
uniquely associated to a not uniquely associated list, meaning that it would lose its Bevill
exemption. This determination was challenged
by user groups such as the Utility Solid Waste
Activities Group and Edison Electric Institute,
and comments were sent to the EPA. The EPA
has not responded to these comments in any
formal way. However, the agencys general

counsel has produced documents that clearly
assume that this change in the BCCW determination has been implemented. This is still
an open issue, and utilities should be aware of
these regulations when blending BCCW with
a Bevill-exempted waste.
New regulations on coal combustion residuals are in the offing and may affect the
way utilities manage fly and bottom ash
and how ash landfills are managed, and this
may change the discussion on comingling
BCCW with ash yet again. It is important to
note that a nonhazardous BCCW could still
be blended with ash, at least under current
regulations.
For many years, coal-fired utilities have
evaporated characteristically nonhazardous
BCCW (<5 ppm Cr) by spraying it directly
into the fireball of an operating coal-fired
boiler, typically at a rate of 30 to 50 gpm,
depending on the amount of coal going to
the boiler. This was the practice with EDTA
wastes in particular. The water is evaporated,
the organic EDTA is consumed in the fireball,
and metals are combined with the fly and bottom ash leaving the boiler. The small rate at
which the BCCW was being added versus the
coal feed made no measurable differences to
any of the fly ash or bottom ash characteristics or stack gases. Some even found a slight
benefit to NOx emissions during the time the
BCCW was being evaporated. This practice
had been successfully used for many years by
coal-fired power plants.
However, changes to the definition of a
nonhazardous secondary material by the
EPA, together with changes to definitions of
what constitutes a commercial industrial solid waste incinerator, essentially will prohibit
a conventional utility boiler from evaporating BCCW in the future. These changes go
into effect at the latest in 2015, but they may
already be in place in some states.
If both evaporation and comingling with
fly ash go away, other options for properly
disposing of BCCW will need to be considered. The amount of BCCW generated
with the combined solvent drains and rinses
can be very large, and off-site treatment or
disposal costs could double the cost of the
cleaning. On-site treatment, particularly of
EDTA wastes, can be time-consuming and
expensive. Other innovative recovery and
beneficial reuse of these wastes has been
considered in the past but never commercialized. However, in the present regulatory
environment, these options may be in more
demand as utilities strive to get their boilers
clean while controlling costs and liability.
David Daniels, is a POWER contributing editor and senior principal scientist at

M&M Engineering Associates Inc.
46
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WHERE WATER and POWER MEET

C U S T O M I Z E D WAT E R S O L U T I O N S T H AT F I T YO U R P O W E R P L A N T
Putting Nature to Work

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Engineering, Architecture, Construction, Environmental and Consulting Solutions

WATER
EPAs New 316(b) Rule and the

Opportunity of Social Costs
Though social costs may be a new term of art in the power industry, it is
about to become a critical one. Heres what you need to understand about
the concept in general and how it applies to the recently finalized cooling
water intake rule.
Matthew Bingham and Jason Kinnell
he U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys (EPAs) recently released rule regarding Section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act
requires that state permitting directors make
site-specific determinations regarding fish protection for cooling water intake structures. (For
an overview of the implications of the new rule
and determining what constitutes best technology available, see Site-Specific Factors Are
Critical for Compliance with Final 316(b) Existing Facilities Rule in the June 2014 issue,
available at powermag.com.) Written explanations must accompany these determinations.
The determinations must consider social benefits and social costs of various approaches to
reduce the amount of fish eggs and larvae that
are entrained in power plant cooling systems.
The requirement to assess and compare
social costs and benefits in site-level permitting decisions is novel, and its inclusion in
the 316(b) rule argues that permit writers and
permittees should develop a deeper understanding of social costs generally and specific
to entrainment remedies such as closed-cycle
cooling and screening technologies.
This article provides some preliminary
perspective on a topic that will undoubtedly
be more thoroughly studied in coming years.
We focus on the social cost of cooling towers because the types of social costs caused
by screening technologies are also caused by
cooling towers, and cooling towers have additional social costs.
reduction technologies requires manufacturing and construction. This generates economic activity, which supports consumption
of goods and services.
Other affected services are environmentaland health-related. Whether operated or not,
natural draft towers can dominate viewsheds.
Unlike screening technologies, the operation
of cooling towers results in a large reduction
in thermal flow. In removing this manmade
effect, cooling towers also eliminate warm
water outfalls that can attract gamefish, function as wildlife refuges, and support yearround angling in cold climates.
When operated, cooling towers are noisy.
They also consume water and create plumes
that precipitate particulate matter and can
affect views. Moreover, fine mesh traveling
screens and cooling towers both require power to operate. Cooling towers are particularly
power intensive, and because of this, their
operation can increase stack emissions, leading to environmental and health effects.
The myriad site-varying effects accompanying cooling towers, combined with the
broadness of the social cost measurement
mandate, can make identifying the social
costs of 316(b) compliance options appear
daunting. Here we hope to make the topic

more accessible using the concepts of economic externalities and equilibriums.
Economic Externalities and

Equilibriums
Economic externalities are benefits or costs
affecting a party that did not choose to incur
them. R. Coases influential 1960 Journal of
Law and Economics paper The Problem of
Social Costs clarifies that the benefit/cost
distinction is one of perspective. Coases
problem of social costs arises when production activities create negative externalities. By
comparison, social benefits arise when production activities create positive externalities.
The social cost requirements in the new
316(b) rule apply to existing facilities with
once-through cooling. From this perspective,
regulatory baseline conditions include the entrainment, thermal flow, and unit performance
implications of once-through cooling. This
perspective is why fishing improvements from
entrainment reductions are commonly expressed as a positive externality (that is, social
benefit) of cooling towers rather than a social
cost of once-through cooling. From this viewpoint, the loss of outfall fishing opportunities
1. Electricity market under baseline conditions. The shaded bars represent units
that are operating so as to meet load at minimum cost. Source: Veritas Economic Consulting LLC
Market Supply Market Demand
90
80
What Are Social Costs?
48
70
Cost per hour ($)
EPA Guidelines for Preparing Economic

Analysis (EPA 2010) defines social cost as
the value lost to society of all the goods and
services that will not be produced and consumed if firms comply with the regulation.
Considering what wont be consumed, entrainment reduction technologies are expensive, costing sometimes hundreds of millions
of dollars. These expenditures ultimately fall
on customers and stockholders who would
forgo consumption in response.
Conversely, the installation of entrainment
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Less expensive to operate
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More expensive to operate

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October 20-22, 2014
St. Louis Union Station Hotel St. Louis, MO
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2014
Coal Handling & Storage

Conference & Exhibition
More than Just Coal: New Sessions and New Opportunities

The Coal Handling & Storage Show Has Been Updated, and Were Not Just Coal Anymore
This is just a sampling of the session topics that conference attendees can choose. Visit online for conference
updates and more information.
The core of Coal Handling & Storage will always be an incredible educational program for professionals
focused on the handling of coal from mine to market. But our newly revised conference program includes
more content to give a deeper understanding of bulk material handling beyond the coal industry.
Lime/Limestone
Biomass
Martin Engineering FOUNDATIONS Workshop
Conveyor Systems I - Operations & Maintenance
Conveyor Systems II - Retrofits & New Facilities
Safety First I
Safety First II
Stockpile Management I: Strategic Issues
Stockpile Management II: Operations & Maintenance
Pet Coke
Coal Ash
Environmental Considerations
Fuel Quality, Characteristics & Blending
Fugitive Dust
Coal Loading & Unloading
Inland/Deep Water Ports & Terminals
NIBA: Track, Train, and Troubleshoot
Emergency Response Workshop
With questions about the Coal Handling & Storage 2014 conference, call Eric Skates, conference marketing
manager, at +1 678 822 9812 or via email at eric@semcoproductions.com.
Exhibiting and Sponsorship Opportunities

Exhibit space is going fastto reach this important and growing market with a customized exhibiting plan,
call Tim Fearney, show director, at +1 678 822 9804 or via email at tim@semcoproductions.com.
WWW.COALHANDLINGSHOW.COM
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WATER
and wildlife refuges is a negative externality.
Additional negative externalities arise from
the installation and operation of cooling towers, including viewshed impacts from tower
and plume, as well as the effects of additional
water and fuel consumption. Social costing of
cooling towers requires identifying and valuing these negative externalities.
The EPA describes social costs as monetized versions of opportunity costs. Opportunity costs represent forgone opportunities
and are most reliably measured at economic
equilibriums. The EPA Guidelines describe
the partial and general equilibrium modeling paradigms for identifying opportunity
costs. Partial and general equilibrium models
consist of equations and data that represent
components of an economy; they simulate
economic decision-making to allow measuring opportunity costs across outcomes. Without delving into the inner workings of these
approaches, their conceptual foundations can
be used to explain the important role of equilibrium in identifying opportunity costs.
cost with the least expensive units to the left.

The green line represents electricity demand or load. Units that are operating when
demand is at this level are shaded and the
total cost of meeting load is the sum of these
shaded areas. As load increases, the green
curve moves to the right, and as load decreases, the curve moves to the left, causing
plant output and system production costs to
fluctuate. As Figure 1 illustrates, in this time
period, all units that can produce electricity
at costs of below about $47/MWh are operating. The capacity that will be removed
from service produces electricity at below

$47/MWh and would be operating in this
time period under baseline conditions.
Figure 2 depicts re-dispatch to create a
simulated with-regulation market by removing the unit and moving other units left
to replace the capacity removed. Because
these units are more expensive to operate, the
cost curve shifts upward at all points to the
right of the now removed unit.
As Figure 2 indicates, other generating
units provide the electricity that would otherwise have been generated more cheaply. At
Implications of Compliance via

Plant Closure
To begin, well consider a facility valued at
$100 million and facing a $300 million closedcycle cooling conversion. In this case, rather
than incurring the $300 million expense, the
facility owner would close the unit. This means
that at the post-closure equilibrium, the opportunity cost arises from the loss of the facility
rather than the cost of the closed-cycle cooling conversion. Instead of increased economic
activity from cooling tower expenditures, jobs
and tax revenue are lost with the closure.
Because a cooling tower isnt installed and
operated, the negative noise, viewshed, water
and fuel consumption effects associated with
installing and operating cooling towers are
not experienced. However, at the equilibrium
the plant is shut down, which means that entrainment is eliminated and environmental
services related to thermal flow are lost.
When units that provide system reliability
services are closed, expenditures on compensating measures, such as transmission system enhancements are required. Also, if the
closed unit is a fossil unit, a source of stack
emissions is eliminated.
As generating capacity is lost with the closure, other units make up the lost generation
and there is a new equilibrium in the affected
electricity market. This process is depicted in
Figures 1 and 2 using the baseline and withregulation structure recommended in EPA
(1991) Guidelines for Conducting Regulatory Impact Analysis. Each bar represents a
generating unit. Capacity is represented by
width and cost by height. To depict merit-order (least cost) dispatch, the units are sorted by
www.powermag.com
51
WATER
2. Electricity market under with-regulation conditions that reduce capacity. Lost capacity means different, more-expensive units operate, leading to generation
cost increases (the difference between the red and blue lines) and changes in emissions.
Source: Veritas Economic Consulting LLC
Baseline supply With-regulation supply
90
80
Cost per hour ($)
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Less expensive to operate
More expensive to operate

Generating units
the new equilibrium, a less-efficient unit is

operating and the cost of meeting electrical
load increases by the shaded area between the
red and blue lines. The closed unit no longer
has stack emissions, but there are increased
emissions from the fossil-fueled plant(s) that
make up the lost generation.
Implications of Compliance via

Cooling Tower Retrofit
As just explained, increased production costs
arise from capacity losses due to a plant clo-
sure. However, similar effects occur whenever

a units net capacity is reduced. This is the case
any time a cooling tower is operated because of
electricity requirements for pumps and fans.
Based on a 1% of capacity rule of thumb
for mechanical draft tower electricity requirement, a 1,000-MW unit converting to closedcycle cooling would require 10 MW that would
previously have been supplied to the grid.
Extended outages for conversions could
have particularly significant production cost
implications. Considering emissions im-
pacts, outages like shutdowns lead to reduced

on-site emissions for fossil-fueled units and
increased emissions from fossil-fueled units
making up lost generation.
These outages are expected to be more
extensive for nuclear plants due to extensive
underground piping and safety considerations.
Unlike fossil plants, nuclear plants do not create stack emissions, and there is no on-site
emission reduction. Operating pumps and
fans are effectively an auxiliary electrical load
requiring replacement generation from off-site
fossil sources that do create emissions.
An additional important effect arises from
cooling tower energy penalties. According to
the EPA, the energy penalty arises from slightly
lower generating efficiency attributed to higher
turbine backpressure when the condenser is not
replaced with one optimized for closed cycle operation when retrofitting existing units. When
discussing this topic, the rule notes the EPAs
concerns regarding increased air emissions associated with additional fuel usage due to the
energy penalty when retrofitting to cooling towers related to human health, welfare, and global
climate. This effect occurs because many oncethrough power plants were situated and designed
to take advantage of naturally cold water. Colder
cooling water is important for thermal generation because it increases unit efficiency. Closedcycle conversions would cause these units to use
warmer closed-cycle cooling water and would
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WATER
3. Hourly efficiency penalties from water temperature.
Hourly efficiency penalty (%)
Generating units often operate less efficiently with closed-cycle cooling, leading to increases in electricity production costs and emissions. Source: Veritas Economic Consulting LLC
Closed-cycle effect Once-through effect
9%
8%
7%
6%
5%
4%
3%
2%
1%
0%
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
Hour
reduce their efficiency.

This effect is specific to the atmospheric,
water temperature, and operating characteristics of affected units. As Figure 3 illustrates,
these efficiency impacts vary over the year.
The red line represents efficiency reductions
using once-through source water over the
8,760 hours in a year. The unit begins the
year at maximum efficiency, becomes less
efficient as water warms in the summer, and
more efficient as it cools down in the fall and
winter. The maximum efficiency loss that occurs around hour 5,000 is about 4%.
6,000
7,000
8,000
The blue line represents the impact from

using closed-cycle cooling water. As the
figure indicates, when using this warmer
water, the unit is almost never at maximum
efficiency. At the worst point, the unit loses
about 8% of capacity. Whereas once-through
efficiencies relate to source water temperatures, closed-cycle efficiencies are related to
atmospheric heat and humidity (that is, wet
bulb temperatures). This leads to the more
variable hourly effect evident in blue.
In the context of system dispatch, this is important; high electrical loads often coincide with
high wet bulb temperatures because hot humid

air increases air conditioning load. As a result,
this effect is at its worst when system generation
efficiencies are low, leading to relatively high
production cost increases in these hours.
The externality implications of the energy
penalty effect depend on fuel type. Because
nuclear plants operate on a fixed amount of
fuel, efficiency reductions become losses in
capacity and emission-free nuclear generation must be replaced with generation from
marginal (load-following or peaking) thermal
sources elsewhere on the grid. This leads to
higher system-level fuel consumption, emissions, and costs. Conversely, fossil-fueled units
typically can use more fuel. In this case, efficiency is reduced as described; however, capacity is not. Rather than system level changes, the
efficiency effect translates into increased fuel
consumption and air emissions at the site.
Many Unknowns
Observing externalities at economic equilibrium is helpful in identifying what social costs
would occur with cooling tower retrofits. Ideally, these costs will be measured and quantified.
Although no specific guidance is yet available,
some of these costs have been studied.
For example, the Electric Power Research
Institute (EPRI) Closed Cycle Cooling program has studied many of the issues described
in this article. EPRI Report 1022760 (2011)
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53
WATER
quantifies a cooling towers site-specific
environmental impacts and discusses and
applies social costtype values for many of
these. EPRI Report 102275 (2011) and Report 1023100 (2011) describe national-level
equilibrium-based assessments of increases
in production costs, as well as shutdown
likelihoods. EPRI Report 1023100 (2011)
describes techniques for evaluating hourly
energy penalty effects. EPRI Report 1023174
(2011) uses an avoided cost framework to
identify the social costs of maintaining sys-
tem reliability with unit closures.

Site-specific examples may also be useful.
A 2009 article by this articles authors (available at http://1.usa.gov/1sz0ehR) applies
similar avoided cost techniques to evaluate
the social costs of maintaining reliability and
also provides an evaluation of the economic
impacts of facility closure.
Other potentially important effects are
less well studied. For example, environmental economists commonly apply the
hedonic valuation technique (this approach
statistically decomposes the overall value

of a property into the value of individual
components) to evaluate the implications of
negative externalities for property values.
However, to our knowledge, the implications
of viewshed-related property value effects
that could arise with cooling tower retrofits
have never been specifically studied. Likewise, no published studies have considered
the economic value of outfall fisheries.
The two fishery-specific studies we located that have investigated this phenomenon
are from the 1970s. Based on these studies,
such sites are potentially valuable because of
trips made by out-of-state anglers; winter angling pressure at one location was 3,500 anglers; at another location, there were 24,000
estimated trips. The prevalence of these winter fisheries is unknown; however, numerous
sources indicate that winter fishing in warm
water outfalls occurs for many different species and waterbody types.
The stack emissions and related social
costs described in this article are a particularly
important effect that has not been well studied.
The rule notes that the EPA has concluded
that the proper forum to address such local
impacts fully is in a site-specific setting. An
implication is that an improved understanding
of the site-specific and system-level effects of
stack emissions may be important.
Site-specific emission changes arise
from effects described earlier in this article.
Although no examples are yet available,
changes in deposition of emissions could be
identified with air impact modeling software.
There is no report that describes a comprehensive system-level approach for assessing
the social benefits and costs of cooling towers. However, the publically available EPRI
Report 1019927 contains a multi-sector
multi-cohort analytical framework for an application with very similar effects.
The (Challenging) Opportunity

Properly identifying and quantifying the social
costs of entrainment reduction technologies
will play an important role in complying with
the new 316(b) rule. While the process will be
challenging, the measurement of social costs in
this context also brings opportunity. More so
than ever before, issues that affect the electricity
system and the environment require thoughtful
determinations. The EPAs novel social cost requirement provides a structured arena in which
to study and evaluate the concerns of important
constituency groups, including homeowners,
anglers, and ratepayers, as well as energy efficiency and anti-pollution advocates.
Matthew F. Bingham (Matthew

.Bingham@VeritasEconomics.com) and
Jason C. Kinnell are principal economists
of Veritas Economic Consulting.
54
www.powermag.com
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GAS POWER
Reciprocating Engines Expand

Roles
Once merely a staple of backup and distributed generation, reciprocating engines are now challenging other resources for utility-scale generationin
addition to carving out some new niches.
rant County is a rural, sparsely populated county in southwestern Kansas.

It doesnt have a lot of peopleits
population in the 2010 U.S. Census was just
7,829but what it does have a lot of is wind.
Like the rest of Kansas, Grant County is in
the middle of the nations best wind resource
area, giving the state the second-highest wind
potential in the country, according to the
American Wind Energy Association. Kansas
gets about 20% of its electricity from around
3 GW of installed capacity, with more on the
way. One of those new wind farms, the Buffalo Dunes Wind Project, a 250-MW farm
being developed by Lenexa, Kan.based
Tradewind Energy, will be partly located in
Grant County.
The Mid-Kansas Electric Cooperative
is a coalition of five rural electric cooperatives and one wholly owned subsidiary
serving customers in central and western
Kansas. Mid-Kansas owns 179 MW of
wind generation along with about 550 MW
of gas- and coal-fired capacitythe newest of which came online in 1978. With the
Southwest Power Pool transitioning to an
integrated market this year, Mid-Kansas
needed quick-responding generation that
could meet its future needs while providing badly needed voltage support for the
area.
It should come as no surprise that MidKansas opted for gas-fired generation, but
not so long ago, it might have raised eyebrows that it opted to use reciprocating engines to power a 110-MW plant. These days
though, the combination of cheap natural
gas and advancing technology has taken reciprocating engines out of their traditional
role as backup and distributed generation
into direct competition with gas turbines,
coal, and even nuclear.
Fast, Flexible, Efficient

Reciprocating engines are becoming an
increasingly popular choice of prime mover
1. Ready to rock. This bank of 12 Caterpillar G20CM34 gas-fired generator sets will power
the new 110-MW Rubart Station plant in Kansas. Courtesy: Caterpillar
56
www.powermag.com
technology for utility-class generation assets, Dean Powell, general manager of

Power Plants & Key Accounts at Caterpillar
told POWER. In many ways, Mid-Kansass
Rubart Station, under construction in Grant
County, with completion scheduled for this
month, exemplifies how gas-fired engine
plants are carving out a serious niche in
utility-scale generation worldwide. The project, being built by Burns & McDonnell, will
comprise 12 Caterpillar G20CM34 generator
sets (Figure 1). The G20CM34 is a new offering from Caterpillar, and Rubart Station
will be the first plant to employ it, as well as
the largest power plant Caterpillar has ever
built.
What Rubart will offer Mid-Kansas is a
plant that can reach full power in less than
8 minutes, ramp up and down continuously
with little effect on heat rate, while requiring relatively little maintenance and support
compared to more complex gas turbine
based plants. What engine-based plants give
up in efficiency compared to combined cycle
plants, they more than make up for in flexibilityand those combined cycle efficiency
advantages start to ebb away in a rapid-cycling environment.
The advantage comes in the modular nature of the plant. Unlike gas-turbine plants
that may have only one or two units to ramp
up and down, multishaft engine plants can
scale their output by taking individual units
offline, while the remaining units can continue running at peak efficiency. And when
waste heat recovery systems are added,
such as with Wrtsils Flexicycle design,
combined cycle gas engine plants can
match or beat combined cycle gas turbine
plants for efficiency in peaking and loadfollowing modes. That matters for a plant
like Rubart, which will be backing up a lot
of wind generation.
Additionally, maintenance can be handled with less overall downtime, since
each engine can be serviced individually
without affecting the others or requiring a
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GAS POWER
2. Big presence. The 430-MW Quisqueya I & II plant in the Dominican Republic is one of
the largest gas-fired engine plants in the world. Plants like this are increasingly competing with
other options for large-scale generation. Courtesy: Wrtsil
plantwide outage. Thats an advantage for

remote areas and especially for areas in
the developing world where the grid may
already be variable enough. (For a review
of a similar plant with a similar role, see

LCEC Generation Plant, Lovington, New
Mexico in the September 2012 issue, online at powermag.com.)
Bigger and Better

When it comes to utility-scale engine-based
plants worldwide, Wrtsil has been a leader
for several decades, with 56 GW of global
installed capacity. Recently, however, Wrtsil has made a push toward even bigger
plants that dwarf the 50-MW to 200-MW offerings that have thus far been its staple. It
recently delivered its first Flexicycle plant
in the Dominican Republic, the 430-MW
Quisqueya facility in San Pedro de Macors,
which came online at the end of 2013 (Figure
2). Consisting of 24 of Wrtsils 18V50DF
dual-fuel engines and two associated steam
cycles, Quisqueya feeds both a nearby gold
mine and the national grid. The size and flexibility of the plant allows it to supply both
baseload demand and voltage support for the
grid. (For more on the Quisqueya plant, see
the Top Plant article in this issue.)
But Quisqueya will not be the largest for
long. Wrtsil is supplying an even bigger plant
in Jordan, the 573-MW Al Manakher plant
outside the capital of Amman. That project is
being built by a consortium composed of Wrtsil, Mitsubishi, Korea Electric Power Co., and
Lotte Engineering and Construction, and is
projected for final completion this fall. This
plant will also employ the 18V50DF enginea
2014
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GAS POWER
3. Heating up. General Electrics new J920 FleXtra engine is one of its newest, most efficient offerings. This one will power a combined heat and power plant in Germany. Courtesy: GE
whopping 38 of them. The Al Manakher plant

will be followed by another Jordanian project,
albeit about half the size, that Wrtsil is supplying for AES and Mitsui.
Wrtsil is still developing smaller plants
and is aggressively pursuing roles that are
ill-suited for gas turbinebased plants. Its
new 20V32TS engines are a two-stage turbocharged version of its 32 series designed specifically for extreme ambient conditions. One
of the first deliveries is for a 47-MW captive
power plant at a cement factory in the mountains of western Saudi Arabia. Temperatures
at the sitewhich is at an elevation of 1,000
meterscan reach 50C in the summer. Such
an environment will challenge gas turbines,
but turbocharged engines like the 20V32TS

can handle them with relative ease.
Double Duty
Combined heat and power (CHP), or cogeneration, has been a familiar niche that reciprocating enginesmostly dieselhave helped
fill. But as smaller gas turbines have begun
competing with diesel as liquid fuel prices
have skyrocketed, gas-fired engines are not
giving up their turf.
General Electrics (GEs) Jenbacher line
from its Distributed Power division has long
been a cogeneration workhorse, but recent
advances have made it more competitive than
ever. The new J920 FleXtra, a 9.5-MW two-
4. Down on the farm. This 2-MW Cummins C2000 N5C genset runs on biogas produced
from an anaerobic digester at a farm in the eastern UK. Courtesy: Cummins
60
www.powermag.com
stage turbocharged engine, can achieve electrical efficiencies up to 48.7% at 50 hertz.

The first one was delivered in July to E.ON
Hanse Wrme GmbHs Stapelfeld CHP plant
in Germany, which will be E.ONs largest
engine-powered CHP plant in the country
(Figure 3). GE and E.ON have developed an
innovative CHP system for this engine that
achieves total system efficiency of approximately 95%. The 60-Hz version of the J920
FleXtra, with a capacity of 8.6 MW, became
available in North America this summer.
Smaller Jenbacher engines are powering other CHP projects in the U.S. and elsewhere. GE
announced in July that it would be supplying a
13.125-MW CHP plant in Merida, Mexico, employing three turbocharged J624 gensets. The
plant will supply power to the grid and process
steam to an adjacent manufacturing plant.
GE has also been pursuing a new niche
for engine-based CHP systems, one that employs a form of carbon dioxide (CO2) capture.
But while larger carbon capture projects are
looking for ways of sequestering CO2, such
as via enhanced oil recovery, GEs solution
employs it for a more basic function: growing plants. The first such system is in operation at a tomato farm in California, supplying
electricity for farm operations, and heat and
CO2 for the greenhouses. (For more on this
innovative project, see Tomato or To-mahto? GE Gas Engines Do Triple Duty in California Hothouse in the October 2012 issue
of GAS POWER, online at powermag.com.)
Waste Not
Its not just natural gas seeing increased use in
reciprocating engines. As biogas and landfill
gas are being increasingly captured and used,
gas engines are often the first choice for power
generation because of their flexibility and tolerance for a wide range of fuel qualities.
GE recently supplied 10 Jenbacher engines to power the largest landfill gas plant
in France, the 17.3-MW Electrod cogeneration plant in Plessis-Gassot, outside Paris, which was built by Clarke Energy. The
new plant replaced an old, inefficient steam
boiler and turbine system, and supplies district heating to buildings in the town center.
Power output was increased by 5 MW, and
overall efficiency was nearly doubled. GE
and Clarke Energy also recently partnered
on a project in the UK to upgrade several
landfill gas plants operated by waste management company Biffa.
Though it has made a majorand highly
successfulpush to introduce its gas-fired vehicle engines for fleet use in the U.S., Cummins
is also focusing on power generation. It recently
supplied the prime mover for an anaerobic digestion plant in the UK. The project at the Nocton Fen Farm in Lincolnshire employs a 2-MW
GAS POWER
5. Gas workhorse. The four-stroke, gas-fired 51/60G is MAN Diesel & Turbos largest gasfired engine. The unit has an output of 18.9 MW. Courtesy: MAN Diesel & Turbo
C2000 N5C genset that burns biogas from a

mixed biowaste digester (Figure 4). The system
can export power to the national grid and also
has a waste heat recovery system.
Coming Soon
The growing market for gas-fired engines
and engine plants is leading to some new
alliances. MAN Diesel & Turbo, though a
traditional force in diesel generation, also offers gas-fired engine options, some of which
have been converted from its diesel-fueled
models. In July, MAN and Fairbanks Morse
announced a strategic alliance to supply the
U.S. power sector with gas-fired and dualfuel engines. Fairbanks Morse offers dual-
fuel engines up to 4 MW, but partnering with

MAN will give it access to MANs portfolio
of larger engines, up to 17.6 MW (Figure 5).
MAN has already supplied a number of gas
engine plants outside the U.S.
A sector as mature as the internal combustion engine might not seem ripe for major technological innovations. But thats just
what may be coming if GE has its way.
Last year, GE disclosed that it was working on a hybrid fuel cellgas engine system
that would leverage advances in solid oxide
fuel cells (SOFCs) it has been developing.
Natural gas would be passed through the fuel
cell, and the mostly syngas output would then
be burned in an attached engine. However, no
details were released at the time.

Then, this July, GE announced what it called
a game changer in SOFC design that uses
stainless steel in place of far more expensive
platinum. That makes it potentially much more
economical than previous designs. GE says that
when paired with a Jenbacher engine, the prototype system, which is scalable from 1 MW
to 10 MW, has an electrical efficiency of 65%
substantially higher than simple cycle gas turbines, and comparable to proposed fuel cellgas
turbine hybrids (see Major Developments for
Solid Oxide Fuel Cells in the August 2012 issue). When waste heat recovery is added, a total
system efficiency of at least 95% is achievable.
Though an actual product is still years away,
this development promises to further expand the
reach of gas-fired reciprocating engines.
Meanwhile, back in Kansas, the folks at
Rubart are looking forward to getting under way.
Rubart Station demonstrates that even
larger-capacity facilities can benefit from the
operational flexibility and comparably higher efficiency that this technology provides,
Powell said.

@POWERmagazine).
s premium product
showcase for the latest

products and technologies in
the power generation industry.
To subscribe to the e-letter, please Contact
Cristane Martin
cmartin@accessintel.com
23389
www.powermag.com
61
PLANT DESIGN
How to Design the Collector Pipe

for Condensate Return Lines
While several methods exist for sizing collector pipes on steam lines, the results
obtained from the various approaches can be quite different. This article will
show how design parameters can be used to calculate the dimensions much
more accurately.
Emilio Casado
System Parameters Are Key

The condensate collected in the drip pots of
the steam lines is saturated or sub-cooled
water that flashes when passing through
the component, which continues flashing
along the drain line. If the pressure of the
condensate at the component entrance is the
saturation pressure (PS) and the resistance coefficient of the component plus the line is K,
the critical pressure at the collector connection (PCR) may be calculated using the graphs
in Figures 1 or 2.
The maximum draining capacity of the
line is calculated applying the following
equation for saturated water:
W / d2 = 280 CE [(PS PCR) / (ve K)]0.5 ln PS
W is the flow rate of each drain line (lb/hr),

d is the internal drain piping diameter of the
selected line with the minimum PCR value (in.),
CE is the expansion coefficient of the saturated water,
PS is the saturation pressure at the entrance
of the component (psia),
PCR is the critical pressure at the end of the
pipes (psia),
ve is the specific volume to PS (ft3/lb), and
K is the resistance coefficient of the pipe.
This equation has been deduced by the author from a 1961 research paper titled Adiabatic Flow of Flashing Liquids in Pipes
written by M. Sajben and published by the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
in its Journal of Fluids Engineering.
The CE is obtained from Figure 3 for the intersection of K with the critical conditions line.
Figure 3 is based on PS = 1,000 psia as a reference pressure and the equation allows using
the CE value for whichever other pressure. The
pressure drop (PS PCR) is divided between the
component and the downstream piping.
When each line that connects to the collector is defined, knowing its flow capacity (W),
the connection pressure (PCR), the saturation
pressure at the component entrance (PS), and
the resistance coefficient (K), the collector
may be designated following these steps.
First. Select the connecting line with the
minimum value of PCR and calculate the total flow (WT) that must be drained for the
collector to the condenser as the sum of the
flows of all connecting lines. If there are two
or more connecting lines that have the same
minimum value of PCR, select the line that has
the greatest flow. For the structural design of
the collector, use the maximum value of PCR.
Second. Calculate an equivalent diameter
of the selected line (Do) as:
Do = d (WT / W)0.5
This equivalent line will have the same resistance coefficient (K) as the selected line,
and it should be designated Ko.
Third. Calculate the resistance coefficient
40
K=2
35
30
10
25
20
20
40
60
80
100
150
300
500
1,000
1,500
15
10
5
0
10
where:
62
Design of the Collector
1. Low-pressure scenario. Relationship of saturation pressure (PS), critical pressure

(PCR), and resistance coefficient (K) for saturated water flow through pipes. Source: E. Casado
45
PCR (psia)
n the steam lines of thermal and nuclear

power plants, condensed steam is usually discharged from components such as
steam traps, control valves, or restriction orifices through draining lines that join to a collector pipe that connects to the condenser.
The size of this collector is typically calculated by applying rules of thumb that can
vary significantly depending on the reference
used. One source may suggest using a cross
section equal to the sum of the sections of the
connecting lines, another source may suggest several times this sum, while yet another
suggests limiting the fluid velocity to small
values, such as 50 ft/sec or less.
The result is that there are very different
designs. For example, a 10-inch-diameter
collector may have two lines of 4 in. plus
two lines of 6 in. connected to them, while
another collector of 16-in.-diameter only has
two 2-in. lines connected.
In order to optimize the design of these
collectors, the following guide takes into
account the capacity of each draining line,
the pressure in the connecting point, and the
equivalent length of the collector.
www.powermag.com
20
30
PS (psia)
40
50
60
PLANT DESIGN
2. Higher-pressure scenario. Relationship of saturation pressure (PS), critical pressure
(PCR), and resistance coefficient (K) for saturated water flow through pipes. Source: E. Casado
700
650
KC = 1 + f [(LC / D) + (60 x n)]
K=2
where:
f is the pipe friction factor,
LC is the straight length of the collector (in.),
D is the internal diameter of the pipe collector (in.), and
n is the number of the connecting pipes to
the collector.
600
6
550
500
10
450
PCR (psia)
of the collector (KC) with the following expression:
400
20
350
300
40
250
60
80
100
150
200
150
The friction factor inside the collector (f)

will correspond to turbulent flow, so it may
be expressed by the equation:
300
500
1,000
1,500
100
f = 0.022 / D0.207
50
0
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
PS (psia)
700
800
900
1,000 1,110
3. Critical conditions. Expansion coefficient (CE) for saturated water flow through pipes
at saturation pressure (PS) = 1,000 psia. Source: E. Casado
1.1
1.0
Note that the value of the resistance coefficient for the end of the collector is 1,
and the equivalent length (L) divided by the
equivalent drain pipe diameter (D) of each
connection to the collector is 60, assuming
them as standard tees with the flow through
the branch.
Select a value for D greater than or equal
to Do. Calculate KC using the equation shown
earlier, and KL using the following equation:
0.9
KL = Ko (D / Do)4, and
K = KC + KL.
K > 1,500
0.8
CE
0.7
K = 1,500
0.6
500
0.5
0.4
10
40 60 80 100
20
150
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
DP/PS
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1.0
4. Flashdance.
Percentage of steam (xF) in the expansion of the saturated water from

saturation pressure (PS) to final pressure (PF). Source: E. Casado
35
PS = 1,500 psia
30
1,000 psia
25
500 psia
20
XF
300 psia
15
100 psia
50 psia
20 psia
10
5
0
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
(PS-PF)/PS
0.6
0.7
0.8
www.powermag.com
0.9
In Figure 1 or 2, obtain the value of PCR for

K and PS. This PS is the saturation pressure of
the selected line at the entrance of the component, and PCR is the critical pressure at the
end of the collector.
Fourth. Apply the equation (shown previously) to calculate the maximum draining
capacity of the line. The calculated value of
W / D2 must be equal to (or greater than) WT /
D2; otherwise, select a greater value of D and
repeat steps 3 and 4.
Note that CE is calculated in Figure 3 for
the intersection of K with the critical conditions line.
Fifth. Finally, check the velocity of the
fluid at the end of the collector and select the
appropriate material for the application.
There is no specific limit for the recommended maximum velocity. In at least one
reference, the maximum velocity values for
different investigated steels are 85 to 390 ft/
sec. Values of 75 ft/sec for continuous service and 100 ft/sec for intermittent service
could be valid for carbon steel collectors. For
higher velocity values, select alloy steel or
stainless steel.
To calculate the velocity of the flashing
water at the end of the collector, first it is
necessary to determine the percentage of the
steam of each draining stream in the expan63
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PLANT DESIGN
5. A typical scenario. The
steam pipe
shown has three drain lines with steam traps
to divert moisture from the line to the condenser. Source: E. Casado
diameter (5.047 in.) is greater than Do = 4.67

in. The next step is to calculate the resistance
coefficient:
Steam pipe
Steam
trap
Steam
trap
Steam
trap
Line 3
Line 2
Line 1
Next, the total flow rate is calculated as

follows:
Pipe collector
Condenser
sion from its PS to PCR at the end of the collector. This may be done using Figure 4.
With the steam tables, we can calculate the
specific volume (ve) of each draining stream,
ve1, ve2, and ve3, and estimate the weighted average specific volume (veT) by:
WT / D2 = 86,120 / 5.0472 = 3,381 lb/hrin2.

W / d2 = 280 x 0.54 [(50 16) / (0.01727 x
60)]0.5 ln 50 = 3,388 lb/hr-in2 > 3,381.
Therefore, the collector diameter of 5-in.

schedule 40 pipe has enough capacity to discharge the total flow.
Now, we must check the velocity of the
fluid at the end of the collector:
veT = ( ve1 W1 + ve2 W2 + ve3 W3 ) / WT
KC = 1 + (0.022 / 5.0470.207)[(394 / 5.047) +

(60 x 3)] = 5.
KL = 40 (5.047 / 4.67)4 = 54.6. Therefore,
use KL = 55.
K = 5 + 55 = 60.
In Figure 1, for PS = 50 psia and K = 60,
PCR = 16 psia.
In Figure 3, for K = 60, CE = 0.54.
is 11.8%. Likewise, W2 = 6.6% and W3 =

5.1%.
With the aid of the steam tables, we obtain: ve1 = 2.93 ft3/lb, ve2 = 1.65 ft3/lb, and
ve3 = 1.25 ft3/lb.
veT = [(2.93 x 29,570) + (1.65 x 8,900) +
(1.25 x 47,650)] / 86,120 = 1.87 ft3/lb.
V = 0.051 x 1.87 x 86,120 / 5.0472 = 332
ft/sec.
Considering that this is such a high value,

selecting a collector of 8-in. schedule 40 pipe
may be more appropriate. In this case, D =
7.981 in., resulting in a velocity of V = 322 x
(5.047 / 7.981)2 = 129 ft/sec. Therefore, a collector of this size made from alloy steel may
be appropriate. For the sake of comparison,
had the sum of the sections been used to size
the collector, as suggested by another reference, the result would have been an undersized collector with a 3.91-in. diameter, while
following the directions provided by another
resource would have resulted in an oversized
collector with a diameter of 12 inches.
W1 expands from 100 psia to 16 psia.

Using Figure 4, (100 16) / 100 = 0.84,
therefore the steam content of this stream
Emilio Casado (ecf@empre.es) is a

consulting engineer with Empresarios
Agrupados. He has experience working
as a mechanical project chief involved in
the design, construction, and startup of
nuclear and thermal power plants.
The velocity (V) may be calculated by the

equation:
V = 0.051 veT WT / D2
CORMETECH
Putting Theory into Practice

The following numerical example shows
how to design a pipe to collect the drains
from the three lines with steam traps shown
in Figure 5.
Line 1: PS1 = 100 psia, PCR1 = 40 psia, K1 =
30, d1 = 2 in., and W1 = 29,570 lb/hr.
40, d2 = 1.5 in., and W2 = 8,900 lb/hr.
9, d3 = 3 in., and W3 = 47,650 lb/hr.
The collector pipe has a straight length, LC
= 394 in.
Calculate collector requirements, as follows:
Select line 2, because it has the minimum

PCR value: 19 psia.
WT = 29,570 + 8,900 + 47,650 = 86,120
lb/hr.
Do = 1.5 (86,120 / 8,900)0.5 = 4.67 in.
Ko = K2 = 40.
As the maximum PCR value is PCR1 = 40

psia, a schedule 40 pipe will be enough to
resist the internal pressure. A 5-in. schedule
40 pipe may be selected, because its internal
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65
RENEWABLES
Whats Needed to Address U.S.

Geothermals Deep-Seated
Challenges?
Geothermal generation is clean, renewable, and cost-effective over the long
term, and the U.S. has vast untapped geothermal resources. So why is it
still operating on the sidelines?
Kennedy Maize
or the U.S. geothermal energy industry,

2013 ended on a positive note. Cyrq Energys Dale Burgett geothermal plant, a
4-MW unit in southwest New Mexico, began
operating in December, the first geothermal
project in a state with plenty of potential
to generate electricity from the heat of the
depths of the earth (Figure 1).
A 6-MW expansion is already under way,
said the company, which has a contract for
sale of electricity from the plant in the Lightning Dock geothermal area to Public Service of New Mexico (PNM). PNM will pay
$97.97/MWh over 20 years, with a 2.75%
annual escalator.
But the commissioning of the plant had a
bittersweet taste. It marked the end of a year
that saw little growth for the domestic U.S.
geothermal industry, while the rest of the
world was enjoying the best geothermal year

in memory. International prospects are for
continued solid growth, while the U.S. faces
a less-promising future.
According to the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA), the U.S. industrys Washington lobbying group, The international
geothermal power market is booming, growing at a sustained rate of 4% to 5%. Almost
700 geothermal projects are under development in 76 countries. Many countries anticipating the threats caused by climate change
realize the values of geothermal power as a
base load and sometimes flexible source of
renewable energy.
Some 530 MW of geothermal capacity came online around the world in 2013,
The most geothermal megawatts to become
operational in one year since 1997. GEA
1. Groundbreaker. The 4-MW Dale Burgett plant is the first geothermal project in New
Mexico. Courtesy: Cyrq Energy
66
www.powermag.com
reports some 12 GW in the development

pipeline, and about 1,900 MW under construction in 15 countries (see sidebar The
International Scene).
Cloudy Future in the U.S.

The picture is clouded in the U.S., the GEA
reports, where in 2013 the U.S. market was
a quieter place to do business. U.S. geothermal growth was flat compared to 2012, said
the organization, with about 85 MW of new
capacity during the year. Says GEA, This
number is about 40% lower than the capacity
additions (148 MW) of 2012 and reflective of
the difficulty in building a new power plant in
the U.S. right now due to a number of policy
barriers. . . . Simply put, the U.S. geothermal
industry is trending opposite of the international market, which is growing at a steady
4% to 5% per year.
This Dickensian best-of-times, worstof-times condition for geothermal comes,
notes the GEA, despite the fact that the
U.S. has one of the best potentials for geo
power of any nation, due to strong government support, the technical knowhow, experienced developers, and vast geothermal
reserves. The U.S. has long been the world
leader in geothermal power and continues
that edge.
The largest geothermal generating project
in the world is The Geysers (although there
are no actual geysers in that geothermal field)
in California wine country in Sonoma, Lake,
and Mendocino counties, covering some 30
square miles (Figure 2). Opened in 1921 by
a local resort developer, the project had an
original capacity of just 250 kW, used to light
the resort community.
Investor-owned utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E), based in San Francisco, in
1960 began operating an 11-MW generating
plant in the geothermal field. Over the years,
RENEWABLES
The International Scene

The U.S. has long been the world leader in geothermal energy,
with most projects located in the tectonically active Rocky Mountain West. The U.S. has some 3,442 MW of geothermal general
capacity, far above that of any other country. The Philippines is
next with about 1,904 MW, followed by Indonesia with 1,333 MW.
However, the country with the highest geothermal penetration
is Iceland (see Icelands Uniqueness Extends to Electricity in
the POWERblog at http://bit.ly/TEyZD2), which gets 30% of its
power from hot rocks and high-temperature steam. By contrast,
U.S. geothermal generation accounts for about 0.3%.
Other countries, growing faster than the U.S., are gaining on
Uncle Sam. According to the Geothermal Energy Association 2014
Annual U.S. & Global Power Production Report, Some countries
are growing so quickly there could be a time in the near future
when the United States is no longer the world leader in geothermal
power, despite its vast supply of geothermal resources.
Among the international highlights:
Indonesia has 63 projects planned, representing 4,400 MW of

capacity. Whether the country, which faces serious bureaucratic and business obstacles, can actually bring all these projects
into service is an open question. But the potential is there.
In energy-poor Chile, the government has scrapped a controversial 2,750-MW planned hydro project in the remote
and beautiful Patagonia region after environmental groups
raised objections. Instead, the government is looking at increased liquefied natural gas imports, efficiency measures,
wind and solar in the Atacama Desert, and geothermal. The
GEA estimates that Chile is looking at 54 early-stage projects or prospects.
Africa is a largely untapped geothermal play, particularly in
the tectonically active Rift Valley region. According to the
GEA, Kenya and Ethiopia are building power plants greater
than 100 MW. By contrast, the average U.S. geothermal plant
is around 25 MW. Kenya has 18 projects planned, with total
capacity of about 800 MW, while Ethiopia has eight projects
planned, with capacity of just over 1,000 MW.
The Philippines has 29 geothermal projects under development, with a total capacity of about 750 MW. According to the
International Geothermal Association, the Philippines privatized its previously government-owned geothermal system five
years ago.
By contrast, while the U.S. has the largest number of planned

geothermal generating projects in the pipeline, at a total of
124, the total capacity of those projects is just 1,000 MW,
demonstrating that smaller projects dominate in the U.S. geothermal market.
PG&E expanded the operation of The Geysers, and capacity peaked
at over 2,000 MW in the late 1980s.
However, because of falling steam pressure from the hot rocks
below the field, the capacity at The Geysers began to decline in
the 1990s. Over the following years, the ownership of the project
changed, as geothermal developers such as Calpine Corp. and California municipal utilities took over PG&Es sole ownership in Cali-
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67
RENEWABLES
2. Big steam. Calpines Sonoma 3 plant is one of 22 geothermal plants that make up The
Geysers field in California. Courtesy: Stepheng3/Wikipedia
fornias restructured energy supply market.

In the late 1990s, projects to deliver municipal wastewater to recharge the aquifer at
The Geysers increased the projects capacity from a low point of about 1,000 MW in
the early part of the century to some 1,500
MW currently.
Over the past nearly 40 years, the U.S.
Department of Energy has devoted substantial sums to geothermal research and development, several billions of dollars by the
estimates from various groups including
the congressional Government Accountability Office. (For more about various geothermal technologies, see the sidebar Defining
Geothermal Technologies.) U.S. geothermal projects have increased in numbers and
overall capacity over the years, particularly
in the volcanic regions of the Western U.S.
The resources remain rich. The GEA recently
reported that the economics of geothermal
energy are positive, debunking some conventional wisdom.
Geothermal power is sometimes mis-
construed to be an expensive source of electricity, said the GEAs June 2014 report,
Economic Costs and Benefits of Geothermal Power. While it is true geothermal
plants require a significant amount of startup capital and some government assistance
in the earliest phases of exploration, the
overall capital costs and operating costs of
geothermal power are significantly lower
than many other technologies. Geothermal
plants, notes the GEA, have no fuel costs,
low operation and maintenance expenses,
feature a 30-year lifetime, and are able to
produce baseload power and follow load,
unlike solar and wind generation.
Whats the Roadblock?

What accounts for the lagging U.S. performance in developing new geothermal projects? In an interview, Karl Gawell, the GEAs
executive director, told POWER that the
complexity of the U.S. power sector, which
is based on largely state-regulated markets
with many moving parts, makes development
Defining Geothermal Technologies

Three technologies characterize geothermal projects. These are:
68
Dry Steam. These are the oldest and

simplest. They draw steam from the
earth at 150C or higher to turn steam
turbine generators.
Flash Steam. These plants move deep,
high-temperature, pressurized water
from underground into lower-pressure
tanks, where the water flashes into
steam to turn a turbine.
Binary Geothermal. These plants can use

water at much lower temperatures, as
low as about 60C, in a heat exchanger with another fluid that has a much
lower boiling point than water. The secondary fluid then flashes to a gaseous
state and can drive turbines.
Under development are technologies that

will use hydraulic fracturing of the geothermal rock formations to extract greater
amounts of energy for power generation.
www.powermag.com
difficult. Geothermal units require considerable upfront capital and long lead times. The
U.S. geothermal market is developing slowly,
he said, because it is driven by state policy
more than national policy.
That distinguishes the U.S. from most of
the rest of the world, where electrical systems are national and most often driven by
central government policies and mandates.
At the federal level in the U.S., said
Gawell, the production tax credit was
the one big thing. But now the tax credits are gone for everything but solar, so
state policies have become the key to the
future for geothermal projects. The legal
authority for federal corporate tax credits
for wind, geothermal, and biomass expired
last year, and Congress has been unable to
renew them.
The primacy of state policy for geothermal is playing out today in California. The
state has the greatest concentration of geothermal power and considerable untapped
resources. Regulators and legislators in the
Golden State are considering how to deal
with a power supply system, run by the California Independent System Operator and
driven by the states long-standing preference for wind and solar, that is discounting
diversity of generating technologies and the
need for reliability services. That translates
into a bias against geothermal.
Its really complicated when you start
looking at the cost of firming variable resources, says the GEAs Gawell. Among
the complexities are Californias aggressive
renewables portfolio standard (RPS) aiming
for 33% of generation coming from renewables, the states rapid retreat from coal (from
any source, anywhere), and the unexpectedly
early closure of the two-unit San Onofre nuclear station.
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Too Much Solar?

Last January, the consulting firm Energy and
Environmental Economics (E3) completed a
study for the states five largest electric utilities (Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power, PG&E, Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, San Diego Gas & Electric, and
Southern California Edison), Investigating
a Higher Renewables Portfolio Standard in
California, looking at the implications of a
50% RPS.
The E3 report found that too much generation as a result of the penetration of solar
power in the state is likely to lead to some
level of renewable resource curtailment in
order to avoid overgeneration and to manage net load ramps. The study found that the
highest-cost generating portfolio that would
meet the 50% level is one that relies extensively on rooftop solar photovoltaic systems.
TRANSFORMATION
UNDERWAY
APPrO
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RENEWABLES
3. One of many? The Salton Seas 49.9-MW Hudson Ranch Power I power plant could be joined
by similar plants when the California water body shrinks further. Courtesy: Geoglobal Energy LLC
The least-cost portfolio is one with a diversity of renewable resource technologies

which, says the geothermal industry, includes
geothermal power.
California has been on a solar buying
binge, the E3 report noted. Solar is heavily subsidized at the federal and state level,
including Uncle Sam picking up some 30%
of the costs. Geothermal does not have that
incentive, says Gawell. On top of that federal largess, solar projects in California are
exempt from property taxes. They also benefit from photovoltaic arrays manufactured
overseas by companies that are subsidized
by their governments. Subsidies should be
available to the range of clean power options
and not just one, says the GEA.
Californias existing RPS program discriminates against geothermal, according to industry officials. Bob Sullivan of
Ormat Technologies, one of the nations
major geothermal developers, says, California has a preferred loading order, and
renewables are at the very top along with
distributed generation and efficiency. Then
fossil fuels start coming on. But geothermal keeps getting overlooked.
Californias power supply program, Ormats Sullivan says, doesnt recognize the
value that geothermal represents in terms
of providing necessary ancillary services
such as frequency, inertia, and regulation.
Intermittent resources such as wind and
solar impose reliability burdens on the
grid that the states power market does
not recognize. The E3 report said, This is
particularly pressing in California where
70
significant changes are planned to the

states existing thermal generation fleet,
including the retirement of coastal generators utilizing once-through cooling.
Some Hope on the Horizon

The California legislature, as this article
was being written, was moving a bill (SB
1139) that would give a boost to geothermal energy, as well as provide a way to fund
environmental mitigation of the increasing
degradation of the Salton Sea (created by
an accidental 1905 flood), which bestrides
the San Andreas fault in the California desert. The Salton Sea covers a large and valuable geothermal resource that will become
available as the inland sea shrinks. The bill
would mandate adding 500 MW of geothermal procurement by 2024. Many developers, including the Imperial Irrigation
District, a major municipal power agency,
are eying the opportunity to tap as much as
2,000 MW in new capacity from the Salton
Sea territory (Figure 3).
However, the lakes retreat uncovers
some environmental threats, such as high
concentrations of selenium and other potentially toxic minerals in the soil. Restoring
the area and mitigating the environmental
impacts will be expensive. The California
legislation would use some of the revenues
from geothermal generation in the area to
pay for the restoration and remediation
program. The legislation, which has passed
the state Senate and the key Assembly committee, has the backing of environmental
groups, including the Sierra Club, Defendwww.powermag.com
ers of Wildlife, and the Natural Resources

Defense Council.
Says state Assemblyman V. Manuel
Prez, a Democrat who represents the desert region and is one of the co-sponsors of
SB 1139, Geothermal, with its ability to
provide base load power with negligible
greenhouse gas emissions, has the potential to anchor Southern Californias energy
needs, while keeping us on track to achieve
our states emissions reductions goals. At
the same time, the development of these
resources could produce thousands of jobs
for our Coachella and Imperial Valley communities while also serving as a source of
financing for Salton Sea restoration.
Geothermal energy policy is also getting
state attention in Nevada, where the legislature last year passed a law taking the state out
of coal-fired power and creating competitive
opportunities for geothermal. The Nevada
legislation requires the retirement of at least
300 MW of coal-fired capacity this year and
another 250 MW by the end of 2017. To replace the coal power, the state law requires
a competitive procurement of 100 MW, each
in three future annual buys. A GEA analysis
concludes, Its expected that geothermal
power will win a portion of these 100 MW
[requests for proposals], but it is a competitive process.
Further north, the Oregon Public Utilities
Commission has tweaked its calculations of
the avoided costs for renewables to include
integration costs for projects under 10 MW.
The GEA notes, The past methodology for
calculating avoided cost did not factor in the
true cost of other renewable power sources,
leaving out integration and other ancillary
costs. Calculation of these costs will prove
to be a complex task, according to several
economists who have looked at valuing integration of resources into the grid.
When it comes to promoting U.S. geothermal energy projects, says the GEAs
Gawell, Theres not much moving at the
federal level. The dynamic changes are at
the state level. Its the states that drive the
game. Hes optimistic about prospects for
geothermal in the U.S., but says its unlikely
that the industry will grow at the pace of the
international market.
Even so, the growth internationally is
good news for U.S. geothermal firms, says
Gawell. Our companies have much to offer foreign project developers in terms of
technology, strategy and experience. American firms are experts in the problems other
countries are just getting to, which represents a major business opportunity for the
U.S. companies.
Kennedy Maize is a POWER

contributing editor.
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www.powermag.com
ADVERTISERS INDEX
Enter reader service numbers on the FREE Product Information Source card in this issue.
Reader
Service
Number
Page
AMEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 . . . . . . . .24
Nord-Lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 . . . . . . . . 6
www.amec.com/power
www.superbolt.com
Applied Bolting Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 . . . . . . . .22
NRG Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 . . . . . . . .13
www.appliedbolting.com
www.nrgenergy.com
ASI Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 . . . . . . . .21
Paharpur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 . . . . . . . .14
www.asi-group.com
www.paharpur.com
Braden Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 . . . . . . . .30
Rolls Royce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 . . . . . . . . 3
www.braden.com
www.rolls-royce.com
Burns & McDonnell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 . . . . . . . .23
Safway Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 . . . . . . . .18
www.burnsmcd.com
CIRCOR
www.safway.com
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 . . . . . . . .27
Schweitzer Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 . . . . . . . . 9
www.circorenergy.com
www.selinc.com
Cleaver-Brooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 . . . . . . . .16
Siemens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . 2
www.cleaverbrooks.com/engineered
www.siemens.com/energy
Cormetech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 . . . . . . . .29
Siemens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 4 . . . . .17
www.cormetech.com
www.siemens.com/energy/controls
Elster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 . . . . . . . .12
Skanska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 . . . . . . . .28
www.elster.com/gas
www.usa.skanska.com
ExxonMobil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . . . . . . 4
Sulzer Turbo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 . . . . . . . . 5
www.mobilindustial.com
www.sulzerts.com
Harco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 . . . . . . . .25
Swan Analytical Instruments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 . . . . . . . .11
www.harcolabs.com
www.swan.ch
Kiewit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 . . . . . . . .15
Valmet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 . . . . . . . .19
www.kiewit.com
MD&A
www.valmet.com
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 . . . . . . . .10
Victory Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52, 53 . . . . . .26
www.mdaturbines.com
www.victoryenergy.com
Membrana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 . . . . . . . .20
Young & Franklin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 . . . . . . . . 8
www.liquicel.com
www.yf.com
Mitsubishi Power Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2 . . . . . 1
Zeeco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 . . . . . . . . 7
www.mpshq.com
www.zeeco.com
POWER
Subscribe today: subscribe@coalpowermag.com
www.powermag.com
75
COMMENTARY
David T. Doot
Joseph H. Fagan
The Northeasts
Natural Gas
Challenge
Sebastian M. Lombardi
David T. Doot, Joseph H. Fagan, and Sebastian M. Lombardi
he experiences of the electric and gas markets in the Northeast this past winter highlighted better than any article,
speech, or prediction the interesting and urgent challenges
and opportunities arising from increased reliance on natural gas
to heat and power homes, offices, and factories.
The use of natural gas has risen so much that demand at times
this past winter outstripped the capacity to transport it into the
Northeast. The result: When natural gas prices elsewhere in the
U.S. were under $5/MMBtu, prices in the Northeast climbed to
over $100/MMBtu on one cold day in New York. In the Northeast,
wholesale electric prices follow gas prices. Thus, New England,
for example, saw bills for wholesale power increase more than
70% over the previous winter.
Advantage: Natural Gas

Abundant domestic supply, favorable costs, and environmental
advantages are driving consumers to natural gas. Moreover, new
environmental mandates have helped drive up costs for coal- and
oil-fired power plants, while Fukushima has challenged nuclear.
Consequently, competition with gas-fired generation has become
increasingly difficult. Indeed, recently there have been significant announced retirements of non-gas generation plants in the
Northeast, such as the 625-MW Vermont Yankee nuclear power
plant and the 1,525-MW Brayton Point coal plant. More retirements will certainly be forthcoming. While new technologies or
higher wholesale power prices might slow this trend, for the
foreseeable future, all signs point to continued growth in the
consumption of natural gas.
The Missing Link: Gas Deliverability
Unfortunately, the ample natural gas supplies are not located in
the Northeast, and last winter suggests that there is not enough
infrastructure to meet the growing demand for domestic, lowercost natural gas. The key production area for natural gas for the
Northeast is the Marcellus shale in the Appalachian region, and
existing pipelines that can deliver that gas to the Northeast
have been running at or near full capacity nearly every day of
the year of late. The impact of these pipeline constraints is most
acute during the winter months, when gas demand is at its highest. With gas demand peaking and the available capacity to get
it to market, gas prices skyrocketed (once by more than 20-fold)
and were highly volatile over the winter.
What Next?
With prices like those experienced this past winter, expansion of
gas infrastructure in and into the Northeast is inevitable. Pundits
debate whether natural gas is the future or a bridge to a future
with new technology supporting broad deployment of distributed
generation, massive expansion of renewables, and/or smaller-scale
76
nuclear power. In a rare show of solidarity, governors from all six

New England states agreed and issued a unanimously supported
policy objective to increase both transmission into New England
for the delivery of at least 1,000 MW of clean energy resources and
natural gas pipeline capacity by at least 1 Bcf above 2013 levels.
New York, which lies between these abundant domestic gas supplies and New England, is encouraging the expansion of both electric and natural gas transmission capacity in and into New York.
The debate decidedly has shifted to how best to meet these
growing infrastructure challenges. Free market advocates resist
government intervention and financing of new infrastructure
and argue that markets will provide the capital when and where
needed. Others fear that electric market design is inadequate to
support new investment in the fuel delivery system. Moreover,
pipeline capacity will not be expanded without long-term contracts with creditworthy counterparties.
Some public policy advocates, including environmental advocates, are working actively to minimize investment in new
gas pipeline, which some fear will make gas generation the future rather than a bridge to reduced consumption and increased
renewables. Investors in alternative fuels such as nuclear and
liquefied natural gas oppose government intervention in the
markets, which they see as potentially unfairly suppressing market prices and favoring principally gas and wind over their technologies. And while virtually all consumers want the economic
benefits of more infrastructure, many are intent on ensuring it is
not in their back yard.
State regulators and elected officials find the current path to
new infrastructure too uncertain and are poised to drive forward
with their vision of expansion, financed by electric customers.
This picture ensures continued controversy and litigation. Market
rules for the purchase and sale of wholesale power will continue
to evolve, along with new laws and regulations. Much more will
be written and said about the topic. Consumers will continue to
be faced with the dizzying pace of change and the ever-growing
opportunities to impact their rising energy costs through wise
investments, smart contracts, and careful energy management.
In short, there promises to be much turbulence ahead. Few
would or should quarrel with the fact that these challenges are
much better problems than those created by excessive reliance
on high-cost foreign oil. So, for those in the Northeast, buckle
your seat belts and enjoy the ride.
David T. Doot is chair of Day Pitneys Energy and Utility Law
group, serves as secretary and general counsel for the New
England Power Pool, and counsels energy and utility providers and
customers across the country on energy transaction and regulatory
issues. Joseph H. Fagan is a partner and member of Day Pitneys
Energy and Utility Law group, and Sebastian M. Lombardi is an
associate in the firms Energy and Utility Law group.
www.powermag.com
LAS VEGAS, NV
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September 2014 Vol. 158 No.

Vol. 158 No. 9 September 2014

Gas Top Plant

Boiler Chemical Cleaning Best

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas, Inc.

Established 1882 Vol. 158 No. 9

COVER STORY: GAS TOP PLANTS

26 CPV Sentinel Energy Project, Desert Hot Springs, California

30 Jingqiao Power Plant, Beijing, China

32 New York University Cogeneration Plant, New York City

34 Quisqueya I & II, San Pedro de Macors, Dominican Republic

SPECIAL REPORT: WATER

40 Boiler Chemical Cleaning: Doing It Correctly

48 EPAs New 316(b) Rule and the Opportunity of Social Costs

Connect with POWER

September 2014 POWER

56 Reciprocating Engines Expand Roles

62 How to Design the Collector Pipe for Condensate Return Lines

66 Whats Needed to Address U.S. Geothermals Deep-Seated Challenges?

6 POWER for All

Australia Kills Carbon Price, Faces Murky Carbon Future

18 New Disaster Preparedness Approaches for Nuclear Plants

22 What Went Wrong with SMRs?

76 The Northeasts Natural Gas Challenge

More September Issue Stories at powermag.com

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POWER September 2014

One of the largest turbines on earth.

Siemens SGT-8000H series gas turbines are capable

turbine in the world doesnt end there. The

EDITORIAL & PRODUCTION

GENERATING COMPANY ADVISORY TEAM

POWER (ISSN 0032-5929) is published monthly by Access

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POWER September 2014

A natural fit for any

Trent 60 attributes support todays energy markets with outstanding

Trusted to deliver excellence

POWER for All

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POWER September 2014

Celebrating 100 years of our Equipment

Copyright 2014 Exxon Mobil Corporation. All rights reserved.

Australia Kills Carbon

the Direct Action Plan a boondoggle, an

third year in a row in member countries of

Hong Kong Mulls How to

POWER September 2014

A New Vision in Service

Sulzer Turbo Services Houston Inc

as several power generating units are slated

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When safety really matters

Eliminate unsafe & time consuming bolting methods

Brochure & case studies:

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POWER September 2014

Make Fuel Flexibility

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