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What Is Coal’s Future? [PODCAST]

October 27, 2018

The Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs—a bipartisan think tank—will host the “Jackson Hole Global Forum: Climate Solutions, Coal Communities, and Economic Diversification,” in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, November 8–9, 2018. Among the sessions on day one is a panel titled “What Is Coal’s Future?” Charles K. Ebinger, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, will be one of the panelists.

Ebinger touched on some of the issues facing the coal industry on an episode of The POWER Podcast. He said the question—“What is coal’s future?”—really needed to be answered in two parts: one addressing challenges in the U.S. and the other taking a broader look at coal usage around the world.

Although coal faces stiff headwinds in the U.S., demand in Asia is very robust, growing 5% or more per year in some places. The fact is, hundreds of millions of people still do not have electricity in various parts of the world, and hundreds of millions of others don’t have truly reliable sources of power.…

West Virginia Coal Plant Will Remain Open Until 2022

October 23, 2018

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FirstEnergy on October 18 said its coal-fired Pleasants Power Station in West Virginia will stay open until June 2022, after earlier announcing the plant would close in January of next year.

FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young said, “Keeping Pleasants in operation … allows the plant to fulfill current capacity obligations and provides additional time for evaluation of the long-term plan for the station prior to deactivation.”

The plant is operated by Allegheny Energy Supply (AES), a FirstEnergy subsidiary. Pushing back the closing date allows Pleasants Power to remain in operation until the transfer of the facility from AES to FirstEnergy Solutions (FES) is complete. The transfer is part of FirstEnergy’s bankruptcy settlement agreement with FES and the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC), Young said.

FirstEnergy in February of this year said it would close the 1.3-GW Pleasants Power Station by January 1, 2019. The company has been suffering steep losses in competitive markets. It announced a plan in November 2016 to exit competitive generation and become a fully regulated company.…

Reports: Trump Administration Supports GE Over Siemens in $15B Iraq Deal

October 21, 2018

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Iraq signed a memorandum of understanding on October 15 to develop power plants in the country with General Electric (GE). The Financial Times on October 18 said the $ 15 billion deal was brokered after senior officials in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump warned Iraq that relations with the U.S. would be threatened if Iraq signed an agreement with Munich, Germany-based Siemens instead of GE, which is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

Siemens in 2016 said it had about 50,000 workers in the U.S. and reported 2016 revenue from its U.S. operations, including more than 60 manufacturing sites, at $ 23.7 billion. GE last year reported it has about 106,000 U.S. employees.

Bloomberg on October 18 said two Trump administration officials who asked not to be identified said senior U.S. officials warned Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi not to move forward with Siemens. Bloomberg reported the Trump administration suspected Iran was pushing Iraq to accept a deal with Siemens “as a way of undercutting ties with the U.S.,”…

Distributed Energy Is Disrupting the Power Industry: Is the Sky Falling?

October 19, 2018

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Utilities are faced with many disruptive changes in the power market. Customers are demanding cleaner energy and turning to distributed generation as a solution. One expert suggested power companies must react and evolve their business models to change with the times.

During a keynote presentation at the Distributed Energy Conference in Golden, Colorado, on October 17, Roy M. Palk, Esq. (Figure 1), president of New Horizons Consulting and former CEO of East Kentucky Power Cooperative, said, “The utility model, in terms of planning, has just been turned upside down. It will stay that way, in my opinion, for years to come.”

1. Roy Palk, Esq., president of New Horizons Consulting, gave a keynote presentation during the Distributed Energy Conference, in Golden, Colorado, on October 17, 2018. Source: POWER

However, Palk was not pessimistic about the future. He encouraged power utilities to “embrace the changes.” The three points that Palk wanted attendees to take away from his presentation were:

Power companies were born and thrive on disruption.

…

Test Your Knowledge: Competitive Maintenance Strategies

October 17, 2018

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Competitive maintenance uses an analytical process and condition-monitoring tools to select the optimum maintenance strategy for each plant system. For example, the optimum strategy for the plant’s steam turbine will be different than that for its gas turbine, and vastly different than that of its feedwater pumps. How well do you know your maintenance strategies?

Gas Turbine Maintenance Strategies – LEARN MORE.

To learn more about competitive maintenance strategies, read MD&A’s tips: “Gas Turbines Maintenance Strategies.”

To take more quizzes, go to the Test Your Knowledge archive page.

The post Test Your Knowledge: Competitive Maintenance Strategies appeared first on POWER Magazine.

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Coal Silo Failures Reveal the Need for NDE Inspection

October 14, 2018

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In July 2016, a coal silo collapsed at an Indiana power plant. The root cause was identified as cracking of the cone-to-skirt weld. Warnings to inspect this vulnerable weld were published widely in conference proceedings and trade journal articles. Nevertheless, coal silos continue to fail at an alarming rate (Figure 1), which suggests that the needed inspections weren’t completed by all power producers.

1. Recent failures of cone-to-skirt welds on large coal silos point to the need for ongoing inspections. Courtesy: Joe W. Frey Engineering Associates, LLC

If you have any of these suspended cone silos (Figure 2) in your plant and are not yet doing non-destructive evaluation (NDE) inspections of their cone-to-skirt welds, then you need to start today.

2. Coal silos like this need our immediate attention! Courtesy: Joe W. Frey Engineering Associates, LLC

Granted, this particular design is a real challenge to inspect, because the silo’s liner seals over the galvanic cell (in layman’s terms, a corrosion sandwich) that is created at the union of the stainless-steel liner and the carbon-steel structure.…