CBC .....tsk tsk tsk !!!! How about this idea for Dalhousie

Well CBC, you seem to have some facts wrong about the NB Power Dalhousie Generating Station. At least about the plant being designed to burn Orimulsion.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2010/03/28/nb-dalhousie-jobs-nbpower-409.html#socialcomments


BOth plant just recently celebrated their 30 and 40th Birthdays. Ironically, just a couple of days before the MOU announcement last fall. It was open to some public and invited guests and retirees.

Unit # 1 is 100MW in size. To put that in perspective, it would supply the then IP Bowater paper mill in the town of Dalhousie when it was first commisioned in 1969. Until a few years ago, 100 MW would kep the province of PEI well lit up. Unit # 1 has a boiler designed to burn coal and #6 fuel oil. It was never fitted with any coal firing equipment, and was used on #6 bunker C through the 70's, and sparadically in the 80's.

Unit # 2 has a size of 212 MW. The boiler and turnbine were supplied from the same manufacturers as the unit # 1. The boiler was designed to burn bunker 6 and Minto coal. This makes it special in the fact that it is a very large boiler for it's capacity to handle the then high ash, high sulphur minto coal. Unit # 2 was commisioned in 1979.

In 1988 the Venezulens approached NB Power looking for a demonstration plant to burn it's new Orimulsion(TM) fuel. Unit # 1 fit the bill perfectly. They graciously added a precipitator to remove flyash from the stack emmisions and spent a year or so supplying Orimulsion to enable the test burn. The test was quite successful, and Venezuela signed a long term contract with NB Power in 1991 to supply fuel to Dalhousie. They also signed many contracts with the British, Italians, and Japanese. I think there some other European countries in the mix as well. For many years Orimulsion flowed all over the planet. With the steady rise in the price of crude through the 90's, the Venezuelans finally decided they could make a lot more money upgrading the oil deposits and selling it as a more refined product. The Orinoco belt is similiar to the Alberta Tar Sands, and said to be as large as the rest of the worlds oil deposits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orinoco_Belt

Read this to learn a little more about Orimulsion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orimulsion
It does say that China is the only place left thet gets any Orimulsion, but I beleive that has ended as well.

Poor NB Power was kinda caught in the middle of the ending of the Orimulsion program, and probably some local political issue. And that is all I care to say about that. Needless to say, NB Power sued and won their case to the tune of roughly 350 million dollars. I'd say that you don't win settlement that big, without having some paperwork on your side to back it up.

Anyway, back to Dalhousie. In 1994 both stations at Dalhousie were fully converted to burn Orimulsion adn went commercial that year. They actually were burning it on and off from the time of the test burn through the time they were fully commercial.

The main part of the conversion was the addition of a Flue Gas Desulpherization unit to clean up the emmisions and make it compliant with laws of the day. (and today)

It was the third such unit in Canada to have a FGD added. Another NB Power facility ( Belledune) was first. Ironically, the oil fired unit at Tracy Quebec, has no srubbers,or even precipitators I beleive. Making it antiquated and one of the worst polluting power stations in Canada. It has 4 units, of the same design as Dalhousie, but with a total output of 660MW. It has a full time staff of 120 employees. It is required for peaking and backup.
http://www.hydroquebec.com/generation/centrale-thermique.html

And yet Dalhousie would be slated to be closed and demolished in favour of keeping a more polluting station running in Quebec. That is not environmetally freindly now is it????

The value of that FGD in todays cost to add to a 312 MW station at $319 per kw. Or $319 x 1000kw/mw x 312MW = $100,000,000. That's in US dollars.

http://www.powermag.com/business/Update-Whats-That-Scrubber-Going-to-Cost_1743_p2.html

The US fleet of coal fired power plants currently equipped with
flue-gas desulfurization systems:

• US – 248 out of 1535 fossil units have FGD
– 101.648 GW scrubbed of 411.840 GW total
– Increase in capacity from 21.39% to 24.68%
from 1994 to 2005 .

http://www.topsoe.com/sitecore/shell/Applications/~/media/PDF%20files/Topsoe_Catalysis_Forum/2007/Hower.ashx

So there is another 1200 power plant in the US that will require what Dalhousie already has.
Seems there must be some value for the station in the future.


All the information I read says that more and more station will be getting scrubbers added. And the costs are rising substantially.

Let's throw out this idea. Nova Scotia Power has coal fired stations. With NO scrubbers. Some day they will be forced to clean up their act. Why not get them to capatilize the cost of converting the Dalhousie station back to coal. Then NB Power can just do a power purchase agreement with NS Power. They supply fuel, NB Power supplies them electricity. NS Power clean up their act somewhat and Dalhousie runs till the end of its useful life. It's evident from the information out there, that there is no miracle cure for the increasing demand for electricity. It's going to take a lot of efficiency, and a lot of wind and solar to offset the demand for the traditional power plant.
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Self Sufficiency

I see the political crying is still ongoing in the Newspapers. Where the was apparently no problem with NB Power 6 months ago, there is a near bankcruptcy today. At least according to the spin doctors.

Now everyone from Keir to the new NB Power CEO is looking for ideas on how to save the province.

Check this one out. This is true self sufficiency.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/03/district-heating-and-beyond?cmpid=WNL-Friday-March26-2010

Seems a litle more reasonable than paying a banker or some private invester $100 a MW hour for windturbine. I beleive the community energy initiative is a good idea, but for a community to barely make 2 or 3% profit (if that) on windmill, and basically create no local jobs, seems like a stretch. And a far cry for self sufficiency.

This is also self sufficiency, but to bad our feeble provincial government, who has as much debt as Irving has assets, has to loan them a few million to do it.

http://www.jdirving.com/article.aspx?id=1904
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I don't know if this is self sufficiency, but apparently dumping 10's of millions of millions of dollars year after year into pulp mills in the normal thing to do.

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2009/09/30/nb-mill-grant.html

And more grant money here. http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/02/22/pulp-mills-invest-in-energy-efficiency-biorefinery-projects/

Does it ever end? Did these companies ever stand on their own? It seems they may as well become crown corporations as well so we can regulate them.

The Unacceptable Risk Edition

When I'm short on ideas, I just steal them. This one is from facebook. Thanks Willie.

"If you want to find out what the government of Quebec's reasoning for the demise of the deal check out Spin Reduxit podcast: The Unacceptable Risk Edition: http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/spinreduxit_20100325_29778.mp3
The first five to ten minutes are good, especially at the four minute mark!"


In my opinion, I still think the public outrage is mostly responsible for the deal being called off. As much as the politicians are saying that Quebec did not want to accept the risk of Mactaquac, dam and the turbine rotor problems at Lepreau, if there was public support for the deal, the government would have accepted the risk and carried on. But contrary, as the 10 issues that Keir mentions were dealt with, with the last one being risk, because NB Citizens did not support the deal, if the government would have signed off on the deal, and the truth come out later, it would have spelled the end of the liberal party forever. Right now, the will just be wiped out for an election or two.
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What a wishy washy government we have

Seems the graham government has changed it's tone again. The last time the changed their tone, and a few sublte words, resulted in MOU 2.

http://www.oilweek.com/news.asp?ID=27463

Maybe this deal will be better than the "best deal ever" MOU1, or was it MOU 2. I can't remember what's what with this government.

Even the world's most famous dictator doesn't trust this government. ( My opologies upfront, as this may offend some viewers) but it does send a message.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXbn_EZP9o0

I was not able to attend the rally in Fredericton, but my applause to all those that attended. The message may be getting through.

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Vermont signs deal with Hydro Quebec

Check out the new deal Hydro Quebec signed with Vermont.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5ihTPtAOQ3FO-ucYN98LrPCz6f4Fg

At 4.5 cents/kw hr, it's a quite bit cheaper than the deal signed here.

If this deal was signed here, versus the 7.35 cents/kwhr NB signed, the savings per year would be:

250MW x 8760 hours per year x $45 / megawatt hour = $98,550,000 per year

250MW x 8760 hours per year x $73.50 / megawatt hour = 161,000,000 per year

The difference is roughly $62,000,000 per year.

If NB was to sign a PPA contract for say, the amount that could be brought through the HVDC ties, lets say three times that amount. So 750 MW.

The difference between the the Vermont price, and Grahams price, would be difference of
$186 Million per year.

Multiplty that over the 26 years that the Vermont contract is good for, and you have a savings of $4.8 Billion. This seems to be very close the value that the NERA report says NBer's will save over 40 years. In fact over 40 years, this deal would save us $7.44 Billion.
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.Great negotiations on the part of the NB Government. (sense the sarcasm)
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Community Energy

I attended the community energy presentation in Dalhousie last night.

There were 20 people in attendence.

Three from NB Power as support for questions and answers concerning the NB Power involvement.

One person from Department of Environment. Again for support in case your wind power site involves a river crossing or may endanger a wild bird or rare plants.

Three government employees who are to act as liasons for anyone interested in trying to make money off this deal.

The main presenter was Carl Brothers, who I beleive ran the wind test site on PEI for 25 years. He is quite knowledgable in wind power. His current company is Frontier Power Systems.

If I counted right, there were three other government employees in attendance.

I didn't see Jack Kier. Unless he snuck in and never said anything.

The hotel owner came down to listen.

One representative of the Papineau First Nation was in attendence and asking some good questions.

So, besides me, that left 5 other people there to see what it was all about.

All in all, in was a good presentation. Some of the material I had seen before. NB Power does have a really good reference document on their site if you wish to get into the power generating business.

If you are approached to have a wind tower put on your property, it certainly seems that you will be looked after in terms of sound and visual "flicker". Seems you can ask for several thousand dollars per year for leasing out your land.

The theme seemed to involve only the big wind turbines though. The 1.5 to 3 MW kind. These are over 400 feet tall, and involves cranes that will cost tens of thousands of dollars per day to rent.
Summerside was used as an example for a typical installation. They spent $28 million to install four turbines that will produce 12 MW. The economics didn't seem that attractive, but they did get $21 in various government funding that may it work quite well.

Nedless to say, anyone wishing to get into this venture, will need several millions just to take a look.

If you want to see who all is serious, check out the government website in May. Your request for Expression of Interest will be posted for all to see.

http://www.gnb.ca/0085/Community/Index-e.asp
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