Colorado Utility Awards Pollution Control Contract, Celebrates Completion of Repairs at Other Plant

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) (Colorado Springs, Colorado) has awarded engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts to Babcock & Wilcox (NYSE:BWC) (B&W) (Charlotte, North Carolina) and The Perry Group Limited (Wadsworth, Ohio) to install pollution-control equipment at the Ray D. Nixon Power Station's coal-fired unit. B&W will design, manufacture and construct a dry absorber to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions at the coal-fired boiler of the 35-year-old plant.

The overall cost of the environmental upgrade is about $100 million, estimated Amy Trinidad, a CSU spokesperson. Work is scheduled to begin this autumn and conclude by the end of 2017. She said the equipment was being installed at the 208-megawatt (MW), coal-fired boiler to comply with the state's haze reduction regulations.

CSU is in the process of installing a scrubber at two units of another generating station, the Martin Drake Power Station. The utility is using scrubbing technology developed by Neumann Systems Group (Colorado Springs, Colorado) to remove SO2 emissions at units 6 and 7 of Drake. That project, which is under construction, is scheduled to be completed by yearend 2017 at a cost of about $170 million. Four years ago, when CSU signed a contract with Neumann, the costs reportedly were estimated at $111.8 million for the experimental scrubbing technology, called NeuStream.

Neumann offers multi-pollutant emissions control technology that reduces SO2, oxides of nitrogen (NOx), particulates and carbon dioxide (CO2), the utility said, but it chose only to reduce SO2 emissions. The Neumann SO2 emissions control project has a lower cost when compared with other scrubbing technologies, as well as lower operating costs, and can be constructed in a small footprint. The last factor is an important consideration for CSU, as the Drake plant is located in downtown Colorado Springs.

The Neumann scrubber project at Drake was unaffected by a fire that temporarily shuttered three of that plant's units in May 2014. That fire, which affected units 5, 6 and 7, was caused when lubricating oil accidentally came into contact with high-temperature steam pipes, CSU spokesperson Trinidad told Industrial Info. No one was killed or injured in the accident, which reportedly cost about $20 million to repair. One of the units returned online two months after the fire; a second unit was operating four months after the fire; and the third affected unit came back this past March, 10 months after the fire. The utility expects insurance to cover most of the cost of the repair work.

The May 2014 fire at the Drake station came shortly after CSU performed a large pollution-control upgrade at that plant. To reduce NOx emissions, the utility installed over-fire air and ultra-low-NOx burners at Unit 7, the largest of Drake's units, in 2013. In 2014, the same equipment was installed at Unit 6. The smallest Drake unit, Unit 5, will have that same equipment installed by yearend 2017, Trinidad said.

Drake, an 80-year-old station, supplies about 33% of CSU's electricity. Its only three units operating, units 5, 6 and 7, came online in 1962, 1968 and 1974, respectively. The utility's decision to install pollution control equipment there and repair the three damaged units has caused some controversy within Colorado Springs, a city of about 450,000 located about 70 miles Denver. Some of the utility's customers have argued that CSU would be better off converting the three operating Drake units to burn natural gas, or demolishing the entire station and building a new gas-fired generating station.

Leaders of the utility disagree, countering that their plans are the most-efficient, lowest-cost way to continue providing electricity to Colorado Springs. Electricity produced from Drake is the utility's lowest-cost power, it said. Even including the costs for the planned emissions control projects at the station, power from Drake is expected to be less costly per megawatt hour than building a new plant or buying long-term replacement power from another utility, the utility said.

When the Drake units were closed, the utility covered the shortfall with gas-fired power and market purchases, which reportedly were twice the per-megawatt price as power produced at Drake.

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