The last of five diesel-powered, three-megawatt generators is lifted into place at Pleasants Energy Wednesday. The generators will allow the plant to become part of a Black Start plan in case of a massive power failure.
WAVERLY, W.Va. — The construction of a $20 million expansion to Pleasant Energy’s facility at 10319 South Pleasants Highway will be in simple terms “a big project for North America,” according to plant manager Gerald Gatti.
GDF SUEZ, the parent company of Pleasants Energy LLC and the operator of the plant located at the Wood-Pleasants County border in the Pleasants County Industrial Center along West Virginia 2, is putting the equipment in place needed to allow a “black start” by the facility.
GDF states it is the number one independent power producer in the world with a presence on five continents.
Black Start Service, according www.pjm.com, “supplies electricity for system restoration in the unlikely event that the entire grid would lose power.”
PJM Interconnection is the Independent System Operator (ISO) for the region and directs movement of electricity through all or parts of West Virginia and Ohio as well as 11 other states and the District of Columbia. PJM serves 60 million people.
During the Black Start, isolated power stations are started individually with electric from an auxiliary generating plant located on-site. The stations are then gradually reconnected to each other to form an interconnected system.
The building which will house the five diesel fuel driven generators, which are in place, will be a common looking, one story steel building measuring 138-feet by 62-feet.
An identical station is under construction at GDF’s plant in Indiana, Pa. A similar plant was constructed near Toledo, Ohio, last year.
“Each of these five EPA classified Cat C-175, 85-liter engines weighs 25 tons,” Gatti said. “The tier 4 diesel engines will produce three megawatts of power. We’ll need a total of 15 megawatts to get one of the natural gas turbines going.”
That translates to 15 million watts of power and PJM has the nation’s largest grid.
Gatti said the engines are environmentally compliant for emissions with equipment which will act similar to a catalytic converter. “Urea will be added to the exhaust which will allow it to meet those emission standards,” he said.
Urea is also called carbamide – which is an organic chemical compound. It is a colorless, odorless solid which is highly soluble in water and practically non-toxic. When it is dissolved in water, urea is neither acidic nor alkaline.
The tier 4 standards require emissions of PM (particulate matter) and NOx (nitrogen oxide) be reduced by about 90 percent. Such emission reductions can be achieved through the use of control technologies-including advanced exhaust gas aftertreatment.
The Pleasants County plant is known as a “peaker plant,” according to Gatti. “That is a plant which is operating during peak hours or peak demand. It’s push button really,” he said.
“We can start getting energy into the natural gas driven turbines in 12 minutes and we’re producing electricity in 25 minutes. But this is not a 24-hour producing plant.”
Gatti said by installing the five-diesel engines, it will allow the plant to start producing the energy needed to run the dual 150 megawatt natural gas turbines on site.
“Then all lines attached to the plant become outgoing power lines and it would help get the local grid back up. The Black Start would be used in an instance like the derecho we had a couple of summers ago,” Gatti said.
And it is the derecho scenerio, and worse, which is the primary reason all the electrical connections will go underground, encased in tubing and resting on a concrete bed.
Burns and McDonnell Engineering Company of Kansas City, Mo., has done the engineering work while Skanska Construction of Evansville, Ind., is doing the construction work with local union workers.
As the ISO, PJM “looks at who generates the power and how to get it where it is needed most. The regulated utilities control the transmission and distribution lines. PJM is responsible to ensure the grid system has enough capacity to meet the demand every day. It’s a very sophisticated system,” Gatti said.
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