POWER June 2020 - 16

O&M
Coal to Gas-Medical
Campus Gets a Generation
Transformation
When a hospital's primary mission is
keeping people healthy, what happens
when a power plant gets sick? That was
the situation that faced the Milwaukee
Regional Medical Center (MRMC) when
it's circa 1950 coal-fired power plant
needed critical upgrades as well as conversion
from coal to natural gas.
The 250-acre medical campus (Figure
1) is home to hospitals, medical office
buildings, and clinics, and is located in
a busy area on Milwaukee's west side.
Five primary tenants of the complex
formed a consortium to address the
plant's deficiencies, an important task
because the plant provided heat and
chilled water for all the campus' buildings.
The consortium had to decide
whether the campus would continue
to be the power customer of a utility, or
whether it should purchase the plant and
have direct control over the expansion
and renovation needed to answer future
campus growth. Purchasing the plant ensured
ongoing reliability.
" Our ownership allowed for the campus
to control the reconstruction to meet
our critical needs for redundant production
and distribution capability while ensuring
continuity of service during the
project, " said Mark Geronime, vice president
of operations for MRMC Thermal.
" The acquisition has been a complete
success and the campus is exceeding
their goals for increased reliability and efficiency
as well as significantly reduced
environmental impact. "
The group acquired the plant and created
MRMC Thermal in April 2016, then
assessed the state of the plant. The
structure and assets within it were aged,
and did not provide emergency backup
or redundancy. Before updating the main
plant, they needed to build a transitional
plant to support the medical campus
during construction. Energy production/
distribution for the campus was treated
as a core, critical asset and MRMC Thermal
established objectives for the plant
to include:
■ Evaluating improved economics for
steam and chilled water production
■ Building physical redundancy by bi-furcating
plant steam and chilled water
production assets
■ Utilizing cleaner combustion technology
to develop improved environmental
emissions
■ Assessing lean construction principles
for delivery of a thermal plant project
Redundancy
The organization hired The Boldt Company
and project manager Jay Ehrfurth, a
veteran of power plant construction and
the former chief power plant engineer for
the state of Wisconsin.
" The medical complex needed ultimate
reliability for their thermal sources, "
Ehrfurth said. " Every piece of equipment
and plant design was created with N+1
redundancy so the team's solution was
to bifurcate the plant. " Construction and
engineering
crews proposed
dividing
the plant into two main sections each
2. The North Plant at the site is now part
of the permanent plant arrangement. It was
originally designed as a temporary site, housing
the boilers and auxiliary equipment for
the boilers, with the thought that once those
items were no longer needed they could be
returned and the building would become
a storage site and warehouse for the complex.
However, as design moved forward,
the building became a permanent fixture to
house two boilers (expandable to four), with
additional water treatment equipment so it
could be a " self-sustaining " plant. Courtesy:
The Boldt Company
supplying chilled water and steam production.
But before any demolition and
reconstruction could start, the campus
needed a transitional thermal source.
The nine-acre site of the plant allowed
room to build what's known as the North
Plant (Figure 2), a facility housing four,
70,000 pound-per-hour steam generating
gas boilers. A 700-foot pipe bridge transported
steam to the main plant's distribution
tie-in points and took treated water
back to the transitional plant. And all of it
was built in less than nine months.
" To get the transitional plant up and
running we rented the boilers-I knew
it was an option and I knew it could be
done quickly, " Ehrfurth said. " It's a little
like leasing a car. "
After construction was completed, the
transitional plant was upgraded to handle
two permanent boilers and water treatment
facilities.
1. The Milwaukee Regional Medical Center campus sits on 250 acres, and is home to
hospitals, medical offices, and clinics, in an area on the city's west side. Courtesy: The
Boldt Company
16
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Demolition and Renovation
Once the North Plant was operational,
demolition began on the coal boilers,
coal ash handling equipment, electrostatic
precipitators, and stacks in the
original buildings. Crews from Boldt,
Burns and McDonnell Engineering, and
NV5 Engineering soon realized there
was no legacy institutional knowledge
about the facility.
" There were diagrams, but they weren't
up to date, " Ehrfurth said. " We were mapping
out the systems with Grunau Mechanical
and Staff Electric team members
POWER|June 2020

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POWER June 2020

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