September 2016 - Water Market Insights 201

Jeffrey Immelt of GE has called upon industry to adopt the same “hurry up” pace endemic to Silicon Valley. This statement was made in conjunction with the initiative to maximize the value of information communicated by machines. This information can be used to improve operations and maintenance. GE outlines impressive advantages of massive machine to machine communication. This leads to speculation that the information generated by pumps, valves, fans, etc. could be worth more than the equipment itself.

McIlvaine is currently conducting a series of webinars for a large U.S. utility which is considering optimization systems offered by GE, Siemens, Emerson, Doosan and others. Better machine communication can contribute a NO_x reduction of more than 10 percent. However, since the utility needs to achieve at least 70 percent reduction at four plants, optimization will only be part of the strategy. It now appears that the most cost effective solution is a combination of five or more technologies.

For this specific project the solution could involve the GE NeuCo optimization system in Massachusetts, the GE combustion (CE) in Connecticut, the GE (formerly Betz) treatment chemicals in Pennsylvania and the GE (formerly Alstom/CE) scrubbing technologies (Tennessee and Sweden) along with changes in wastewater treatment and maybe even ZLD as furnished by the GE water groups in Minnesota, Washington and other areas. The utility has to determine the best interaction of all these technologies. GE also has to maximize the communication among its own technology providers who, as previously independent companies, are not part of a seamless operation.

The series of webinars using the McIlvaine Global Decisions Orchard http://www.mcilvainecompany.com/Decision_Tree/subscriber/Tree/Default.htm is demonstrating the value of organization and decisive classification but also a “hurry up” pace through the power of the wise crowd. The utility will likely choose a unique combination of technologies which had not been envisioned at the beginning of the two-month webinar series. Unexpected input from many different sources has made a major contribution to the likely choice.

Wise Crowd Criteria
Criteria	Description
Diversity of opinion	Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.
Independence	People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.
Decentralization	People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
Aggregation	Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

All these criteria have been met with the webinar and Decision Guide approach used on this project. McIlvaine intends to take full advantage of the wise crowd in the future.

For more information on the specific Decision Guides being used by power plants for flow and treatment decisions, click on:

For more input on how wise crowd initiatives will be used to help various suppliers, click on:

Utility E-Alert Tracks Billions of Dollars of New Coal-fired Power Plants on a Weekly Basis

· NRG’s Limestone Electric Generating Station to switch to Cleaner Coal

· Southwest Research Institute will lead $3.3 Million Oxy-Combustion Pilot Plant Study

· Environmentalists win lawsuit against E. D. Edwards Coal-fired Power Plant in Illinois

· NRG Penalized for Faulty Wastewater Treatment at Maryland Coal-fired Power Plants

· Indonesia Cirebon 2 Coal-fired Power Project appoints Black & Veatch as Consultants

· Hollysys wins Contract to provide Proprietary Distributed Control System for Ultra-Supercritical Coal-fired Power Generating Units to Fujian Luoyuanwan

The 41F Utility E-Alert is issued weekly and covers the coal-fired projects, regulations and other information important to the suppliers. It is $950/yr. but is included in the $3020 42EI Utility Tracking System which has data on every plant and project plus networking directories and many other features.

DATE	HOT TOPIC HOUR AND DECISION GUIDE SCHEDULE *The opportunity to interact on important issues*
September 8, 2016 11:30am CDT	PacifiCorp Webinar 5 on front end NOx reduction - Review of options for NOx reduction including combustion modifications, reburn, SNCR, and optimization with review of previous presentations of Emerson, Doosan, Siemens and GE. A number of case histories, now being posted to PPAQD, will also be reviewed. Summaries of phone calls to end users may also be included.
TBA *Markets*	Food - Analysis of 12 separate applications within food and beverage with analysis of valve, pump, compressor, filter, analyzer and chemical options; impact of new technologies such as forward osmosis.
TBA *Markets*	Municipal Wastewater - Quality of pumps, valves, filters, and analyzers in Chinese and Asian plants; new pollutant challenges; water purification for reuse.
TBA *Markets*	Mobile Emissions -Reduction in CO, VOCs, and particulate in fuels, oils, and air used in on and off road vehicles; impact of RDE and failure of NO_x traps and the crisis in Europe created by the focus on clean diesel.