Gas Turbine Plants

Gas Turbine Power Plant

Back in the late 1990′s the Southern Companies and later Mirant  proposed and won approval for a new Gas Turbine plant with cooling towers to be located at Bowline Point in Haverstraw New York. This plant, called the Bowline Point 3 Generating Plant was actually started and construction was halted only after Mirant went bankrupt, post Enron. Additional Mirant generating capacity was also shuttered when the Lovett Coal fired plant was closed due to the lack of coal scrubbing technology. In total, there has been a net loss of power production in the Hudson Valley over the last decade and replacement power must be identified before Indian Point can be decommissioned.  In broad outlines, here is a working proposal.

The Concept

The Governor and the State of New York would investigate a Public/Private partnership to replace approximately 2000 KW hrs being produced at the Indian Point Nuclear Power plant with 2200 KW hrs. of electricity generated using gas turbines to be constructed at a location such as Bowline Point in Haverstraw. The concept would utilize gas produced in the Southern Tier of New York and transported via the Millennium pipeline to 3 newly constructed gas turbine generators in the Hudson Valley. The plants would utilize cooling towers instead of river intakes, and would would effectively replace the Indian Point generating capacity.

The Grid

Location of the Plants

As many already know, the largest impediment to electrical generation is the proximity of the power source to the consumer. Indian Point Plant, in Buchanan, New York is some 37 miles north of New York City on the East Bank of the Hudson. The Bowline plant is five miles south and diagonally across the river from this plant and is already on the grid. A minimum amount of infrastructure work would be needed to bring a new plant on line.

The River

Cooling Towers

The Indian Point and Bowline Point plants now use river intakes to cool the reactors and make steam, trapping aquatic life in screens on the river,  while discharging this heated water back into the river causing other issues. The New Gas Turbines would use cooling towers instead of river discharges to cool the water, and limit the intake exposure by recycling more of the needed water. This would help considerably in the health of the Hudson’s ecosystem.

The Pipeline

Millennium Pipeline

The State of New York has now become a major player in the production and distribution of Natural Gas. There are many upstate taxpayers that now have an express interest of getting the gas they own to market. There are opportunities now for the State and Local governments to work together to bring this gas to market and I feel that under the current economic conditions, the time is ripe to promote the use of local Natural Gas production.

The Location

Bowline Point

Bowline Point is located in the Town of Haverstraw New York, on the west shore of the Hudson River. It is now the location of 2 gas/oil fired generating plants built between 1970-1972. These high cost plants rarely operate, typically during peak demand. Now owned by GenOn, the location was approved in the late 1990′s for a gas turbine plant with cooling towers.

In closing, we call on the Governor and the State Legislature to investigate the replacement of the Nuclear Power generated at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant with new natural gas plants to be sited in the Hudson Valley of New York. We call on the Governor to use the gas produced in the State of New York and transported via the Millennium Pipeline to a location such as Bowline Point in Haverstraw, and to use incentives such as tax concessions and partnerships to make this relationship a reality. We also call on Environmental Activists to explore our solutions and to take ownership of the capacity debate, because the only way to close Indian Point is to replace the production and to replace it in a location that is near the same end users. Bowline Point can really fit the bill.

Hydraulic Fracturing has been around for 60 years. Developments made by U.S. engineers around 2008-9 have simply made the process much more commercially viable.

Read about Fracturing here:

Keep in mind, 90 percent of all gas wells drilled in the United States since 1949 have been fracked. Since fracking was introduced in 1949, over 2 million frack treatments have been pumped without a single documented case of treatments polluting a water aquifer.

AQUIFER

The EPA has a draft study concerning the drinking water debate. Keep in  mind, the depth of most shale gas deposits drilled is between 6,000 and 10,000 feet. Water aquifers exist at an average depth of 500 feet. Claims of ‘migration’ between the shale gas layers and water aquifers due to fracking or for any other reason, are patently absurd as the gas would have to pass through millions of tons of impermeable rock. If the rock was that porous, neither the water nor the gas would have been there in the first place. This geological reality explains why EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, a determined enemy of fossil fuels, recently told Congress that there have been no “proven cases where the fracking process itself has affected water.” The truth is, Hydraulic fracking procedures are heavily regulated and not exempt from drinking water and other key regulatory laws. Concerns about using “excessive water resources” in the process are already being assuaged by new developments, including recycling water. And the U.S. Ground Water Protection Council confirms that drilling with compressed air is becoming increasingly common.  In truth, all U.S. companies must abide by federal water laws, and what the greens are really saying is that fracking should be singled out for special and unprecedented EPA oversight.

Fracking releases toxic or radioactive chemicals.

Fracking Fluid Composition

The reality is that 99.5 percent of the treatment is water and sand. Much of the remainder is made up of a maximum of 12 or so harmless gelling agents, like Guar gum used in ice cream making, and chemicals commonly used around the house. Domestic running water faucets being set alight with a match might wow gullible film audiences, but dissolved methane found in well water are naturally occurring. As the largest component in natural gas, methane is not even regulated as it is not toxic and escapes naturally like soda bubbles. The truth is that researchers found a mere 68 wells across Pennsylvania and New York where more than 20,000 water wells are drilled annually methane was detected in 85% of the wells they tested.

Facturing Worst Case Impact

CANCER In Dish, Texas, Mayor Calvin Tillman caused a furor this year by announcing that he was quitting to move his sons away from “toxic” gases—such as cancer-causing benzene—from the town’s 60 gas wells. State health officials investigated and determined that toxin levels in the majority of Dish residents were “similar to those measured in the general U.S. population.

EARTHQUAKES Given the commonality of fracking without seismic impact, the risks would seem to be remote. Very little can be found about Fracking and Earthquakes. The NYT did a story last year, and there is a couple of footnotes here.

SMOG Fracking increases smog levels again is followed up by a NYT story here, and with little or no real research other than this.

LOCAL IMPACT Drillers use trucks to haul sand, cement and fluids, and those certainly increase traffic congestion and pollution. We think the trade-off between these effects and economic development are for states and localities to judge, keeping in mind that impact to localities decrease as drillers become more efficient.

LOCAL LAWS AND STATES RIGHTS Environmentalists claim fracking was “exempted” in 2005 from the federal Safe Water Drinking Act, thanks to industry lobbying. In truth, all U.S. companies must abide by federal water laws, and what the greens are really saying is that fracking should be singled out for special and unprecedented EPA oversight. Most drilling operations—including fracking—have long been regulated by the states. Operators need permits to drill and are subject to inspections and reporting requirements. Many resource-rich states like Texas have detailed fracking rules, while states newer to drilling are developing these regulations.

Frackosaurus Coloring Book

The next major FCC action might just be the White Space spectrum, those frequencies that used to carry your old analog TV channels. A more complete understanding of this spectrum has led me to believe that there is a major opportunity here, and the possibilities are nearly endless. Most recent findings, those the FCC intend to base decisions on, see this as a Win-Win for consumers.

One of the most important aspects of this technology is that the white space that surrounds your home or school belongs to you. Using the white space, high speed internet access can be broadcast via these seldom used low frequency channels to a central hub, a combination TV tuner/wireless router that can both send and receive data as well as hook up all of your wireless devices. The theory is that you, or your school, or your church should have access to these low frequency signals and at the least, be able to connect all of the devices to a single point.  The local devices can be anything. TV’s, laptops, smart phones, 2 way’s, or kid trackers. The network uses the old analog  TV signal space grandma used to watch Cronkite on.

Think of your hub being the TV station both receiving and broadcasting, via an encrypted, secure, and low power channel to your IPad at the train station 3 miles away. Think of connecting all of the televisions, stereo’s, speakers, and consoles  you are  using today to your hub without a single wire. Since it uses the low frequency space the old analog TV signals occupied before the birth of digital broadcasting, there are virtually thousands of available frequencies at low power for communities both large and small. Google has volunteered to create a database that uses geolocation technology  to map the location of the device and compares it to the location of Hubs in an area. Theses White Space devices will need no line of sight to maintain a signal so at very low power, your hub can be hidden and you could still have a great connection 4 stories down.

The space between the channels on your television is where the future of communication lives. The potential for this white space is limited only by creativity, ingenuity, and the need for clear rules of the road. Wireless broadband is the most promising way to extend affordable, ubiquitous, high-speed Internet connections to all Americans, create mesh networks for emergency first responders, enable new capabilities that bring safety, convenience, and comfort to consumers in their homes, and empower the creators of tomorrow’s innovations.

The time is now that we allow free access to this white space, it in turn will allow developers to come up with new and innovative uses for this spectrum in conjunction with device makers, and it should allow those communities with no broadband penetration a good chance to be connected. How about a network of free television channels to broadcast the High School play or football game. How about an integrated Fire, Police, and EMS communication and training network without the outlay of taxpayer money to pay the FCC for those pesky and expensive license’s. The future is now and on November 4th, the FCC I hope would agree with me.