LOW-SULPUR COAL IS FIRING UP

The number of announced new coal-based construction projects in the United States vaulted from one to ten in the first few months of 2001, and now stands at some two dozen. A harbinger of these projects was the Hawthorn Unit 5 project, completed last year by the team of Kansas City Power & Light Co., B&W and Burns & McDonnell, Kansas City. Firing PRB coal with reduced sulphur emissions, the new unit is equipped with SCR, dry FGD, the most advanced LNBs commercially available and the largest pulse-jet fabric filter system in the United States.

Many coal-fired plants constructed in the next few years will feature circulating fluidized-bed (CFB) technology. The low operating temperature of CFB boilers means that air emissions are inherently low. What's more, CFB boilers are able to cleanly burn a wide variety of fuels, so a CFB plant is able to switch fuels quickly and frequently to exploit changes in fuel markets. In a CFB boilers, the fuel rides on a bed of sand and is fluidized from below by a continuous jet of combustion air. The result is excellent fuel-air mixing and nearly ideal combustion.

Perhaps the highest-profile CFB project is located at Jacksonville Electric Authority's Northside station in Florida. The Northside is one of the last of the Clean Coal Technology projects, with the U.S.Department of Energy sharing the cost of retrofitting atmospheric CFB boilers into Northside Units 1 and 2. After the CFB retrofit is complete, the plant will fire petcoke, coal or a combination of both.

POWER NETWORK PROJECT - MICROGRID

Northern Power Systems will engineer, build and operate a custom-designed, utility-connected energy generation, storage and distribution network within the area known as Mad River Park in Waitsfield, Vermont.

The first-of-its-kind MicroGrid power network will operate in parallel with the bulk utility generation and distribution system and will provide dramatically increased power quality and reliability to residence and businesses (including Northern's newly constructed head-quarters facility) located in the park.

The MircoGrid is a natural evolution of Northern's ongoing work in on-site power system that incorporate combined heat and power (CHP) and deliver critical load support for individual customers.