Power Air Quality Insights No

Power Air Quality Insights
No. 179 October 16, 2014

WELCOME

The following insights can be sent to you every week. This alert contains the details on the upcoming hot topic hour, breaking news, and the headlines for the Utility E Alert for the previous week. This is one of a number of free services. You can sign up for any of these newsletters and of course request to be removed from the mailing list at any time. See registration following the newsletter.

· “Dry Scrubbing” Will Be the “Hot Topic Hour” on – October 23, 2014

Europe and the U.S. have been reducing coal burning power capacity and as a result need to increase gas turbine capacity. But there is one area of the world where increased use of coal rather than decreased use of coal will result in increased gas turbine capacity and increased use of gas for home heating. This counter intuitive program is being tracked in a number of McIlvaine market reports and databases.

One way that increased coal use leads to more gas turbines is in integrated gasification combined cycle plants (IGCC). There is one such plant under construction in the U.S. The Kemper County plant is now projected to cost almost $5.6 billion. Initially the project was estimated to cost $2.4 billion. Start up is now slated for May 2015.

The plant will capture 65 percent of CO₂ and deliver 3 million tons of liquid CO₂ to oil companies for use in enhanced oil recovery.

This program has been subsidized by the U.S. government. The high cost can be offset where there are enhanced oil recovery opportunities. However, there are not many generation sites which are convenient to oil and gas extraction sites where EOR would be justifiable.

The one area of the world where increased coal will lead to very large increases in gas use is China. In northern and western China, 700 million tons of coal will be gasified. The gas will then be piped to the big cities. Six hundred thousand coal-fired industrial boilers will be replaced by new gas turbine systems as well as home and residential gas heating units.

The Chinese government has launched a fast track $260 billion program to eliminate the smog in the large cities. The foundation of this program is clean gas for heating and power.

The magnitude of this effort is demonstrated by a comparison to the U.S. Gas turbine plants in the U.S. deliver power equivalent to coal-fired boilers consuming 400 million tons of coal per year. The Chinese program will, therefore, generate enough gas to fuel nearly twice the entire U.S. gas turbine capacity.

This program is generating outrage among environmentalists around the world. But the outrage is failing to have any effect. The smog problem in the major Chinese cities is causing huge health problems now. The average Shanghai citizen is less concerned about creating a pleasant life for his grandchildren fifty years from now than he is about eliminating the asthma risk for his children this year. He is less interested in the fate of the polar bears than he is in eliminating haze so severe that the sun is not visible.

The economic argument is equally persuasive. Coal gas is estimated to cost as low as $4.50/MMBtu. Imported LNG is $15 /MMBtu.

This attitude is widely shared throughout Asia. Australia has eliminated the carbon tax and completely reversed its position on global warming. In both Australia and Korea there is considerable movement toward converting coal to LNG. Posco is building a coal to gas plant to replace the LNG it is now buying on the international market. India is considering following the Chinese lead. It has coal reserves but little gas.

Mainstream Renewable Power Granted Consent by Scottish Government to Build and Operate 450 MW Offshore Wind Farm

Global wind and solar company Mainstream Renewable Power has received consent from the Scottish Ministers to build and operate its 450 megawatt Neart na Gaoithe (NnG) offshore wind farm in the Outer Forth Estuary in the North Sea.

This will be the first large-scale offshore wind farm constructed and operated in Scottish waters to be directly connected to the Scottish electricity system. The 450 megawatt wind farm will have the capacity to deliver enough power for 325,000 homes (more than the number of homes in Edinburgh) and equal to 3.7 percent of Scotland’s total electricity demand. The wind farm is expected to start pre-construction activities next year and begin generating electricity by 2018.

NnG represents a capital expenditure investment of around £1.5 billion and is on track to be the first offshore wind farm in the UK to attract true non-recourse project finance at the construction stage. It has pre-qualified for the Infrastructure UK Treasury Guarantee and European Investment Bank funding.

The wind farm will consist of up to 75 wind turbines and will occupy an area of approximately 80 square kilometers. At its closest point to land it lies over 15 kilometers off the Fife coast in water depths of 45-55 meters.

Ameren Missouri filed with the Missouri Public Service Commission its 20-year plan that supports cleaner energy in the state of Missouri, including major expansions of solar and wind power.

The utility's "Integrated Resource Plan" examines electric customers' projected long-term energy needs and describes Ameren Missouri's preferred approach to meeting those needs in a cost-effective fashion that maintains system reliability as it moves to cleaner and more diverse sources of energy generation.

Many of Missouri's electric generation units are nearing half a century old, and Ameren Missouri's comprehensive plan calls for transitioning its generation fleet to a cleaner and more fuel-diverse portfolio over the next two decades as energy centers reach the end of their useful lives.

Ameren Missouri, a subsidiary of Ameren Corporation, would add nearly 500 megawatts (MW) of renewable power generation under the plan, which, together with other planned changes to its generation resources, would allow the utility to achieve a 30 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2035, based on 2005 levels.

The plan includes construction in 2016 of a second solar energy center that would be the largest in the state of Missouri. Earlier this year, Ameren Missouri broke ground on its first utility-scale solar energy center in O'Fallon, MO, which is scheduled for completion later this year.

Southern California Edison (SCE) has launched a Request for Offers (RFO) to procure electricity from independent power producers as part of its Solar Photovoltaic Program (SPVP).

This RFO is the fourth solicitation (SPVP 4) since the program began in 2010. The program is primarily designed to encourage energy production from rooftop-mounted solar photovoltaic facilities sized between 500 kilowatts and 10 megawatts. SCE is seeking up to 63 megawatts of direct current power in SPVP 4 based on the economics of the offers.

SPI Solar Subsidiary Announces EPC Agreement for 30 MW Solar PV Project in Inner Mongolia

SPI Solar, a vertically-integrated photovoltaic solar developer, announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Xinyu Xinwei New Energy Co., Ltd., has signed an engineering, procurement and construction agreement for a 30 megawatt PV project in Alxa League, Inner Mongolia. The agreement with Alxa League ZhiWei PV Power Co., Ltd., marks SPI Solar’s second agreement for a PV project in the Inner Mongolia region announced recently. The project is scheduled to begin in October 2014, with completion and grid connection expected by the end of March 2015.

Viaspace and Tibbar Energy USVI Report Progress for 7 MW Biomass Power Plant on St. Croix

Viaspace Inc. has issued an update regarding the progress of the Tibbar Energy USVI, Giant King Grass fueled, 7-megawatt biogas power plant on the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The power plant will provide the only base load renewable electricity in the USVI. The majority feedstock is from Viaspace Giant King Grass (GKG). Tibbar will sell power for 25 years with a 5 year option to the Water and Power Authority (WAPA). Tania Tomyn, CEO of Tibbar, said, "Our project is a balance of public and private relationships. This is a long term commercial solution that gives the USVI fossil fuel independence and low cost power.

Tomyn said, "We expect to start work the first of the year (2015) and that will create 150 jobs between the power plant construction and the farm development that will happen simultaneously. After construction, the plant will employ around 35-40 staff for 25 years." Tibbar has already been operating farms on the island of St. Croix growing GKG for over 2 years now with great success.

· Fluor awarded Construction Contract AEP at Northeastern Power Station in Oklahoma

· Westmoreland and Cabot Corporation announce Activated Carbon Capacity Expansion

· URS awarded Contract to Install SBS Injection™ Technology at Vectren’s A.B. Brown

· Calaca Coal-fired Power Plant Expansion in Batangas, Philippines delayed

· Aboitiz Power targets 2,000 MW expansion in the Philippines over Five Years

· BHEL awarded Rs 7,800 Crore Contract for Power Project in Tamil Nadu, India

· Balingian CFB Coal-fired Power Plant first of its kind in Malaysia

· Construction of 730 MW Gas-fired Power Plant in Lufkin, TX to start in 2015

· Verbund to sell Combined Cycle Gas-fired Power Plants to Austrian KKR

· China needs the International Expertise to solve its Air Pollution Control Problems

“Dry Scrubbing” Will Be the “Hot Topic Hour” on – October 23, 2014

McIlvaine has a free website available to power, incinerator and cement plants around the world Dry Scrubbing - Continuous Analyses. The webinar on the October 23^rd will provide further clarification of all the various options including both DSI and the “reactor”. “Reactor” is one way to describe both the fluid bed and spray dryer segment. But this is a matter for discussion and resolution. Paul Farber has proposed categories in our last webinar. We need to survey enough people around the world to classify the segments and standardize. China has been a leader in fluid bed scrubbing with some of the largest systems every built. So it is critical to obtain input from this country.

The webinar will call on international suppliers such as KC Cottrell to help lead the discussion. Where is DSI the best option? If you have a medium sulphur coal, can you use spray driers or is the fluid bed the only dry option? How are U.S. utilities and cement plants planning to meet the HCl requirements of MATS? Where do you use sodium reagents as opposed to calcium? Can you beneficially use or regenerate the flyash /sulphate mixture?

We encourage participants to view the site prior to the webinar and to ask questions and make observations which will be useful to decision makers.

On Thursday at 10 a.m. Central time, McIlvaine hosts a 90 minute web meeting on important energy and pollution control subjects. Power webinars are free for subscribers to either Power Plant Air Quality Decisions or Utility Tracking System. The cost is $300.00 for non-subscribers.

See below for information on upcoming Hot Topic Hours. We welcome your input relative to suggested additions.

DATE	SUBJECT
October
16	Municipal Drinking Water *This webinar has been postponed for some weeks. In the meantime we encourage you to submit information to be posted on this free website.*	More Information
23	Dry Scrubbing
November
6	Coal-fired Power Plant NO_x Reduction Innovations
13	Power Plant Cooling
December
18	Boiler Feedwater Treatment

· Balingian CFB Coal-fired Power Plant first of its kind in Malaysia

· Verbund to sell Combined Cycle Gas-fired Power Plants to Austrian KKR

· China needs the International Expertise to solve its Air Pollution Control Problems