POWER March 2011 - 73

PLANT MANAGEMENT
2. Long-term project support. When Omaha Public Power District constructed Unit 2
of its Nebraska City Power Plant, HDR Engineering supported the staff on-site for more than
seven years. Courtesy: HDR Engineering
3. Project partner. When Constellation
Energy upgraded its Brandon Shores Power
Plant with state-of-the-art emissions control
equipment, HDR Engineering spent four
years on-site supporting the engineering and
construction. Courtesy: HDR Engineering
the October 2009 issue or in POWER's online
archives.) In contrast to the original
plant at the site, which involved well over
300 separate contracts, the new plant was
built with a single EPC contract, a key factor
in limiting capital costs to $950/kilowatt.
When the new plant went live in May
2009, it was on budget and on schedule.
For more than seven years, a representative
from the owner's engineer firm maintained
an office on site and in many ways
was indistinguishable from the owner's
staff (Figure 2).
Constellation Energy, Brandon Shores
Power Plant, Air Quality Control Retrofit.
An owner's engineer project that ran from
2006 to 2010 at the Brandon Shores Plant
outside Baltimore, Maryland, involved project
management and engineering in support
of project development, major equipment
and construction specification and negotiation,
and consulting and oversight from
project inception to completion. (See " Top
Plant: Brandon Shores Generating Station "
in the October 2010 issue.) The project was
executed under a target cost EPC contract
with air quality control (AQC) equipment
and a new wet chimney procured through
direct contracts with Constellation Energy.
The state-of-the-art AQC systems installed
for the project went into commercial operation
in December 2009 for Unit 1 and March
1, 2010, for Unit 2. The new systems make
the Brandon Shores Plant one of the cleanest
coal-fired power plants of its size in the U.S.
today (Figure 3).
Alliant Energy, Multiple Sites, Clean
Air Compliance Program. Alliant Energy,
March 2011 | POWER
which serves more than 1.4 million customers
in a three-state region in the American
heartland, hired an owner's engineer to assist
with implementation of a Clean Air
Compliance Program that included multipollutant
control retrofit projects at multiple
coal-fired stations. The projects include installation
of low-NOx
catalytic reduction for NOx
burners and selective
reduction as well
as activated carbon injection with pulse-jet
fabric filters for mercury and particulate
matter reduction. The owner's engineer assisted
with conceptual design engineering,
managing field test programs to verify design
criteria, equipment procurement, and
contract negotiations. The owner's engineer
also performed a high-level review of detailed
engineering deliverables, including
piping and instrumentation diagrams; process
flow diagrams; structural, mechanical,
and electrical design documents; and validation
of performance guarantees.
Edison Mission Energy, City of Industry,
California, Natural Gas Plant, New
Construction. Using an owner's engineer
helped the Edison Mission Group, a subsidiary
of Edison International, establish
a contracting methodology and execute an
EPC contractor RFP and selection process
for a new five-unit, LMS100, natural gas-
fired power plant. The plant will serve peak
power needs in the Los Angeles area. The
owner's engineer supported development
of the EPC technical specification, finalization
of the combustion turbine supply
contract, project cost estimation, and geotechnical
survey specification. The project
uses reclaimed water as its primary source
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of water and includes aesthetic, acoustic,
and environmental treatments consistent
with its industrial setting. The site, previously
owned by the City of Industry's Urban
Development Agency, is well-suited
to this new facility because it had existing
water supply, natural gas supply, and electrical
transmission available adjacent to the
project site. In this case, having an owner's
engineer with both power expertise and the
ability to navigate local utility and permit
approvals was key.
We Energies, Rothschild, Wisconsin,
Biomass Energy Project. Development
of a 50-MW biomass-fueled cogeneration
power plant at a central Wisconsin paper
mill benefited from owner's engineer services
that included feasibility analyses,
conceptual design development, and project
controls (scheduling and cost estimating).
Co-locating the plant with an existing steam
host facility will optimize project economics
by minimizing capital investment through
the use of existing infrastructure and maximizing
energy conversion and efficiency
through cogeneration. This project will
nominally supply 200,000 lb/hr of process
steam. The owner's engineer supported biomass
combustion technology assessments,
AQC equipment selection, thermal performance
estimates, capital cost estimates, site
layouts, and lifecycle pro forma analysis to
establish respective costs of steam and power
generation. The owner's engineer also
supported selection of the project design
engineer and constructor; technical support
continues through design reviews and technical
assessments. ■
-James Connell (james.connell@hdrinc
.com) is national director of power facilities
for HDR Engineering and is based in
Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dennis Grennan
(dennis.grennan@hdrinc.com) is energy
sector marketing lead for HDR Engineering
and is based in Omaha, Nebraska.
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POWER March 2011

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