It’s been going on for a few weeks now, and there the discussion includes some good ideas on how to fix water hammer issues.

One of the points they make, is that fast energy storage can be used for frequency regulation, to reduce the amount of ramping at power plants. I would be curious if anyone has made a study or has the data to support the heat rate impact their plant is seeing due to increased frequency and speed of ramps – such as those seen to balance wind generation.

This would make a great paper for the ASME Power Conference coming up in July 2012.

If you have another idea for a paper, please let me know. I’m the Paper Coordinator for Track 24 (Simple and Combined Cycles) and am actively looking for additional papers (and/or panel ideas) for our sessions. If your idea doesn’t fit Track 24, I can help you get in touch with the right Track Chair as well.

Power was out from Yuma, AZ to San Diego, CA and into parts of Mexico. Approximately 5 million people were in a blackout – which started right around 4pm, in the heat of the afternoon and the start of rush-hour traffic.

According to the news reports and statements from APS, the outage was triggered by a worker who was removing some monitoring equipment at a sub-station in Yuma – the equipment had apparently not been working correctly. It must have been behaving very badly for the utility to send out a worker to remove it during the peak time of a hot summer day. The worst case scenario expected by APS was for a blackout in Yuma, AZ. That the outage spread to San Diego and Mexico was unexpected, and will be the focus of their outage investigation.

Back in 2009, there were talks about upgrading the US Transmission grid. An example of one plan is found at NPR.org. In the picture from NPR, if you click the Proposed Lines “off”, you can see that the San Diego area has only one medium sized transmission line feeding it – coming directly from Yuma, AZ.

Most of the power is back on this morning, and airports are beginning to recover from the disruption. But, maybe it’s time to revisit the idea of upgrading the US transmission grid?

I did the economic analysis for residential solar panels a few years ago for a friend who lived in Arizona. At that time – before massive federal incentives – you could break even on installing solar panels on a new house. For a new house, the added capital costs were expected to be approximately $300/month over a 30 year mortgage to cover a $300/month electric bill. So to me, it seems like a no-brainer for new developments to include solar panels by default.

Retrofits like the one being done at the Redskin’s stadium may cost more, but with current incentive programs it can still make economic sense for the owners, and from an image standpoint it’s great marketing.

And if you’re into job creation, the incentive programs for small-scale solar could put a lot of people to work. Here in Washington state, there are additional incentives for solar installations – but the equipment must all be manufactured within the state to get the maximum payback rates. The policy with the incentives was put together as a jobs bill, not an energy bill.

With all the current incentives for solar power, I think it might be worth looking to see if we can find a little bit of room.

I was lucky enough to be elected as the Combined Cycle Commitee Paper Coordinator for 2012, so if you have any ideas for papers, presentations or panel sessions; I’d love to hear about them! 

You can post ideas here as a comment to this post, or send me a private message directly. Even if your idea does not involve combined cycle equipment, I can point you to the right coordinator to get in touch with.

The 2012 ASME Power Conference will be held in Anaheim, CA July 30-August 3, 2012. The location is sure to have many options for side trips and vacations along the way.

The conference will also be co-located with the 20th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE), which should bring a lot of interesting key note speakers and presentations, as well.

For more information on the conference, visit ASME’s Website.

Abstracts for papers are due by November 21, 2011, so there is still time to put your thoughts together.  More information on the publication schedule is also available at the conference website.

Hope to see you all in Anaheim next year!

The Forum at T2E3

If you have ideas for new categories or have any trouble posting a question or comment, please let me know with a comment to this post, or send me an email.

Thanks for your participation!
-Tina

Japan to Construct Combustion Power Plants – Power Technology.

Based on some gross assumptions, the 5 million tons of wood waste they’ve collected will fuel five 10 MW power plants for 12-15 years.

Assumptions include:  the wood waste has an average heating value of 6,800 Btu/lb (20% moisture), net plant heat rate is 14,000 Btu/kWh and plant capapcity factors will be better than 80%.

For more information on the conference – including how to register for the workshop, see ASME’s website.

Looking forward to seeing many of you next month!

From the article, regarding the new “Provisional Standard for the Commissioning and Maintenance of Fuel Gas Piping Systems”:

“NFPA 56 provides minimum safety requirements for the commissioning and maintenance of fuel gas piping—from the point of delivery to the equipment shutoff valve—found in power plants and industrial and commercial facilities. Activities impacted include the cleaning of new or repaired piping systems, placing piping systems into service, and removing piping from service. The term “system” applies to all system components—including valves, regulators, and other appurtenances—and any segment of the system that can be isolated from it.”

The standard, which is expected to be released later this year will require new operating procedures and inspections for most facilities.  To learn more about NFPA 56 from the CTOTF presentation, visit www.ctotf.org- there should be an item on the left-hand navigation bar for “NFPA 56″.  The link opens a PDF of the presentation made by John Puskar of CEC Combustion Services Group.  A full copy of the NFPA 56 draft is included at the end of the presentation for industry review (note, this is not the official release version – that is not expected to be available until later this year).

Natural gas is a powerful commodity.  Please be safe.

Thank you again to CCJ for another timely and important article.

The Question was posed by an LM6000 user, but responses could apply to any engine compressor.