I have spent the last several months working at work, a novel concept. 

I work at a power plant where the newest unit was built in 1959.  It seems strange to work on something that is almost as old as I am especially considering that it is in better shape.

Both of the coal fired units were taken off line for maintenance.  We did them one at a time to avoid turning out the lights.  Since I am the only I & C technician working here I got to learn a lot about the units.  I have been working at these plants for a little under a year so the outage was a real learning experience for me.  I now know what  to avoid.

During the outage I worked ten hours a day seven days a week.  Then I had an hour plus commute each way.  That left only enough time to band aid any emergencies that came by at home.  It’s a good thing that I have several cars available to drive since I now have several partly broken ones that are cluttering up the side yard.

Becky and I did find time to buy her a “new to us” car.  It is a ’07 Dodge Magnum R/T.  I keep telling people that we bought grandma a used station wagon.

After the outage I got to deal with all of the things at home that didn’t get done while I was away.  At some point I will either be done or dead.  I’m hoping that the ’51 gets some work progress, too.

Enough belly aching.  Here are a few pictures that I took at the plant. 

At one time Canon City had electric trolley cars that used 30 cycle power.  This building was used to distribute and control that power.

Some of the equipment and tools are still in the now decommissioned plant.  I don’t know when it was shutdown but it was sometime in the 1940s.

The building associated with this cornerstone is still in use and currently houses the turbine of the unit that was commissioned in 1959.  There was an even older power plant located on the site but the only remains of it are some retaining walls and stubs of the wrought iron support beams.

There are two operating power plants on the site.  One was commissioned in 1955 and the other in 1959.  They both have stoker coal fired boilers.  Both are scheduled to be shutdown at the end of 2013 due to the Governors’ “clean energy, clean jobs” initiative. 

 But for now the plant continues to generate power; like it has for the last sixty years.

One of my jobs is to take care of the emissions monitoring equipment that is located on the stacks.  Since there are no elevators on the stacks I get to count the ladder rungs on the way up.  I’m always thankful that I could do it one more time.  It actually isn’t all that bad since the instrument platforms are only about 100 feet up.

The bonus is that, weather permitting, the view from the stack is really nice. 

 The old penitentiary is directly across the high way from the plant.  If I am ever thinking that my job is no fun all I have to do is look over there and realize that things could be a lot worse.  The penitentiary is about the only thing in the area that is as old as the power plant. 

I also get to work at the Pueblo Power Plant.  The three units were commissioned in 1922, 1941 and 1949.  Units 41 and 49 are still nominally operational; they last ran in the summer of 2010.  We expect to operate them for a few days this summer and then they will also be decommissioned. 

 I particularly appreciated the manufacturer letting me know that I shouldn’t use the turbine to power an airplane. 

The machine in the background is a reciprocating steam engine driving the condenser vacuum pump.  There is now an electric motor driven vacuum pump so the steam driven pump is no longer used.  I’d love to see it run. 

The Pueblo plant was built during the heyday of the steam locomotive and so some of the then current technology made its way into the power plant.  This is the plant air compressor, lifted from a steam locomotive. 

 The switchgear looks like something out of an old horror movie.  The truly scary part is that it is still energized and in use.  

The electric system in the Pueblo plant ranges from the exposed knife switch type to modern computer controls.  A person has gotta know what they are about to work on the equipment there. 

 Every time that I go exploring the Pueblo plant I find more interesting stuff.

I hope that you have enjoyed this non automotive post.  Maybe next time I’ll tell you about the ghost that haunts the plant.

Norm

Side streets:

My second son joined the Army.  He said that he felt that unless he was willing to serve he didn’t deserve the benefits of living in this country.  I am proud of my son.

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.    III John 1:4

Keeping in touch with some of my old firefighter brothers and now actively involved in the Power Generation Industry, we are learning – unfortunately through passed major industrial explosions involving the accumulation of combustible powder – that accidents have mainly occurred when operators underestimate, or dismiss entirely, the devastating potential of combustible particulate solids.

A mechanical failure within the conveyor system can cause enough heat buildup to start a coal fire. Inadequate lubrication in the bearing of a roller or the friction between a seized roller and the conveyor belt can buildup heat sufficient to ignite a coal laiden belt.

Although many such incipient fires may not have been as widely advertised as Russia’s recent Sayano-Shushenskaya hydro-electric castastrophy, they have occurred. (John Cowdrey will also point out that even this devistating catastrophy hasn’t hit the main-stream U.S. media.) Plant Operators throughout our industry speculate that the frequency of incidents may be rising with small contained fires occurring regularly at many plants.

To be explosive, coal dust must have a large enough volatile ratio (determined by laboratory analysis), a small enough particle size, and sufficient quantity. Coals with a volatile ratio greater than 0.12 are considered a dust explosion hazard. This category includes PRB and bituminous coals but not anthracite coals. Bituminous and anthracite coals burn, but only bituminous coals explode.

The National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 654 standard (Standard for the Prevention of Fire and Dust Explosions from the Manufacturing, Processing, and Handling of Combustible Particulate Solids) warns that only 1/32 of an inch of dust over 5% of a room’s surface area presents a significant explosion hazard and makes the following recommendations:

• Minimize the escape of dust from process equipment and ventilation systems.

• Use dust collection systems and filters.

• Prefer surfaces that minimize dust accumulation and facilitate cleaning.

• Provide access to all hidden areas for inspection purposes.

• Inspect for dust residues in open and hidden areas at regular intervals.

• Clean dust residues at regular intervals.

• Use cleaning methods that do not generate dust clouds, if ignition sources are present.

• Only use vacuum cleaners approved for dust collection.

• Locate relief valves away from dust hazard areas.

• Develop and implement a formal program for performing hazardous dust inspections, testing, housekeeping, and dust control using defined methods at defined intervals.

Although the driving technology is not new, improvements have continually been made in this area of our industry with control systems, generators, and turbines to increase efficiency, reliability and output.

The most common of these newer turbines is the Pelton wheel, which is basically a series of cups attached to a hub (under the baby blue cover in the pictures of Manitou Unit #2). A jet of water is aimed at the cups and the resulting force on the cups causes the turbine to spin. Electricity is subsequently created by the relative motion between magents and conductive windings inside the gray & red generator.

Other types of turbines include the Turgo, Crossflow and various axial flow turbines, where the shaft through the center of the turbine runs in the same direction as the water flow, much like a boat propeller.

The first hydroelectric power plant was built in 1882 in Appleton, Wisconsin to provide 12.5 kilowatts to light two paper mills and a home. Today’s hydropower plants generally range in size from several hundred kilowatts to several hundred megawatts, but a few mammoth plants have capacities up to 10,000 megawatts and supply electricity to millions of people.

Worldwide, hydropower plants have acombined capacity of 675,000 megawatts and annually produce over 2.3 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity. Our nation’s largest hydropower plant is the 7,600 megawatt Grand Coulee power station on the Columbia River in Washington State. The plant is being upscaled to 10,080 megawatts, which will place it second in the world behind a colossal 13,320 megawatt plant in Brazil.

Hydropower supplies 9 percent of the country’s electricity, accounts for 49 percent of all renewable energy used in the US. And after cutting my teeth in this industry with a couple of good people in a coal-fired plant, I am excited to be working on the forefront of renewables.

Change is good ;)