New 2.5MW solar now online

[OhioBurner©]

Just thought you guys might like to hear that while my company used to be one of the biggest coal-powered generating companies around we did just go commercial with our first solar farm. Supposed to get a couple more yet this year. Not going to offset much coal generation yet, but hey it's a start! And from a real time control perspective (what I do) their really isn't anything to do except monitor its working okay. Think I can handle that one.

 

[spirilis]

Congrats! Sounds excitingly boring :D

 

[semipro]

OhioBurner:
Sorry to diverge but since you know coal power plants I was wondering if you thought it would be relatively straight-forward to convert one to a waste-to-energy power plant?
We have a nearby coal PP shutting down and with its rail and river access along with power transmission lines, boilers, stacks, etc. it would seem to have all the basics needed for a waste-to-energy plant.

 

[peakbagger]

I will step in on the waste to energy aspect and yes its possible but most of the boiler except maybe the drums out through to the stack is going to get replaced, the balance of plant on the steam side is still good. The fuel handling is completely different. I converted an old coal plant to wood several years ago and that was easy compared to WTE. WTE is pretty nasty stuff, it builds up all over the place inside the boiler and they used blasting to remove it. The grates are completely different and the flue gases are usually acidic so the all the duct work and emissions equipment needs to be stainless. They emissions equipment is extensive. The economics for WTE is basically not as power plant but a way to offset high landfill costs. Landfill may cost $100 or more a ton so a WTE can reduce the landfill volume and weight by roughly 90%. Thus if they can burn it for less than the cost to landfill it makes sense. Some firm are now sifting through the ash and recovering metal for recycling.

WTE got a real bad rep 25 to 30 years ago when the PURPA contracts came out, the built the plants cheap and the emissions were pretty nasty, many states and regions banned them. The modern ones are expensive to build but they are very clean.

The new B&W mini nukes would be a nice fit in many old coal plants but they are long way off from getting one permitted.

 

[peakbagger]

With respect to the solar, I expect the edge effects on bright but partly cloudy days will keep you amused for awhile.

 

[Where2]

With respect to the solar, I expect the edge effects on bright but partly cloudy days will keep you amused for awhile.

I bet he will. I'm still amused by edge effects, even after two years of watching my solar output... Also still catch myself smiling when I find my TED 5000 reading negative kW when I'm making lunch...

We've got two WTE plants adjacent to our local landfill. The country recycling program kept 83,000 Tons of material from going into the WTE plant last year.

 

[OhioBurner©]

Don't have any experience with waste plants, other than one of my cowerkers often talks about when he was an operator at the local trash burning plant before it got shut down. To my knowledge my company has never been involved with one, other than a few that where IPPs / municipal units that were on our grid that we took the power from. We have shut down several coal plants recently, a few select ones are in the process of converting to natural gas.

 

[peakbagger]

Most of the newer waste plants are owned by Covanta I believe. That company or one of their competitors actually bought the rights in North America to one of the better waste to energy grate systems which are a key component of getting a waste energy plant to run right. Europe basically banned landfills so WTE is the next best thing to get rid of trash.

Its definitely a niche market. Most major power producers wouldn't go near it, they would much rather have someone else build it and sign a contract for the output.

The other major thing with a WTE plant is it has to be baseload power, the plants don't do well being operated intermittently. Few power companies are cutting baseload power these days, the big market is highly flexible plants that can vary their output rapidly to deal with when a cloud goes over the OPs new solar plant. Eventually there may be cost effective grid stage storage but currently its several orders of magnitude more expensive than the market will bear. SOme of the new generation of natural gas plant can go from cold to full output in minutes and back again to cold in very short time assuming they have gas available. That doesn't work in New England so we have to depend on the large hydros in Maine and a fleet of oil fired peakers when the grid is really fouled up as the gas supplies are bottlenecked.