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EPA finalizes power plant effluent limitation guidelines

September 1, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
September 1, 2020

The Environmental Protection Agency on Aug. 31 issued a final rule to reconsider parts of the agency’s 2015 Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELG) rule.

The agency’s final Steam Electric Reconsideration rule revises requirements for two waste streams from steam electric power plants: flue gas desulfurization (FGD) wastewater and bottom ash (BA) transport water.

Background

In 2015, EPA issued a final rule that set the first federal limits on the levels of toxic metals in wastewater that can be discharged from power plants.

The rule was subject to legal challenge and the agency received two petitions for administrative reconsideration, including one from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy.

In response, EPA agreed to reconsider the ELGs for two waste streams.  

EPA’s 2020 rule contains the final revised regulations for those two waste streams.

EPA said that only those coal fired power plants that discharge bottom ash transport water or FGD wastewater may incur compliance costs under the 2020 final rule.

EPA estimates that 75 plants may incur compliance costs under the final rule, in an industry population of 914 plants.

EPA said that key changes to the 2015 rule include:

The final rule becomes effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Additional information about the final rule is available here.

MRES celebrates beginning of generation at the Red Rock Hydroelectric Project

September 2, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
September 2, 2020

Missouri River Energy Services (MRES) on Sept. 2 marked the beginning of hydropower generation at the Red Rock Hydroelectric Project (RRHP) in Iowa with a video dedication ceremony.

Built on the Lake Red Rock dam near Pella, Iowa, RRHP will create a new purpose for an existing Army Corps of Engineers facility completed in 1969, MRES said. MRES, a joint action agency, broke ground on the project almost exactly six years ago.

Now Iowa’s second-largest hydropower generator, the retrofitted dam will harness the power of the Des Moines River to produce electricity for thousands of homes in MRES member communities across Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

RRHP is expected to produce more than 36 megawatts of electricity, and 55 MW during summer months when water levels are typically highest. Financing for the project was provided by MRES’s partner, Western Minnesota Municipal Power Agency.

“RRHP serves as a model for public-private partnerships to retrofit some of the estimated 80,000 dams in the U.S. that do not produce power,” MRES said in a news release. The project was included in the federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard, which was designed to speed the development of critical infrastructure projects across the U.S.

“The Red Rock plant will run 24-7,” said Tom Heller, president and CEO of MRES. “It is not intermittent like wind or solar power.”

The project “will also give us another generating resource in our ongoing effort to diversify our renewable portfolio,” Heller said in the video dedication ceremony.

“What an amazing achievement to get this done,” said Joy Ditto, President and CEO of the American Public Power Association, in the video dedication ceremony. She noted that the project will provide renewable, affordable and reliable hydropower.

Ditto said that Heller was an “incredible leader to help get this done.” (Heller received the Mark Crisson Leadership and Managerial Excellence Award during APPA’s Public Power Connect: Virtual Summit & Business Meeting earlier this year).

The communities that MRES serves “were instrumental in ensuring that this project could come to fruition,” she went on to say.

“Working with their locally elected officials who manage their utilities, understanding what their community needs were going to be now and into the future, demonstrates the value of public power and the way that we can come together and ensure that our communities’ needs are being met through our electric utilities.”

The project is an example of how public power utilities listen to their communities, Ditto said.

As public power pursues innovative initiatives like electric vehicles, community solar and energy storage “we’re going to be working with our communities and our community leaders in understanding how we need to achieve those innovative activities,” she said.

Other speakers participating in the video dedication ceremony were:

To view the video dedication ceremony, click here.

Paul Lau named to succeed Arlen Orchard as CEO and general manager of SMUD

September 1, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
September 1, 2020

Paul Lau has been named to succeed Arlen Orchard as the CEO and general manager of California public power utility SMUD.

Lau currently serves as chief grid strategy and operations officer at SMUD and has been a member of the SMUD executive team for more than 12 years.

Lau’s appointment will be finalized at the SMUD Board of Directors’ Sept. 10 meeting. Lau would assume his new position October 3 and Orchard’s last day as CEO is October 2.

Orchard announced his retirement last fall after working at SMUD for more than 30 years.

Lau joined SMUD in 1982 as an electrical engineering student while completing his Bachelor of Science in Engineering at California State University, Sacramento and joined SMUD permanently as an assistant electrical engineer after he graduated in 1984.

lau
Paul Lau (photo courtesy of SMUD)

Lau moves to SMUD’s top post after serving as chief grid strategy and operations officer since 2015. In that capacity, he had responsibility for SMUD’s power supply and distributed energy resources strategies, including the operating strategies of SMUD’s generation, transmission and distribution systems.

Lau has been a member of SMUD’s executive leadership team since 2008 and has held a variety of c-suite roles, including overseeing customer, technology and energy delivery.

Lau serves as Vice Chair of the Large Public Power Council Emerging Trends Task Force, on the Board of Directors of the Smart Electric Power Alliance, as a Board Member of the Electric Transportation Community Development Corporation and as an Alternate Commissioner of the Balancing Authority of Northern California.

Crews from LUS, GRU and Alabama utilities deploy to Vinton, La., to help with restoration efforts

August 31, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 31, 2020

Crews from Louisiana public power utility Lafayette Utilities System (LUS), Florida public power utility Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) and Alabama public power utilities have deployed to Vinton, La., to assist with restoration efforts after Vinton was hit by Hurricane Laura last week.

The LUS crews left Lafayette Saturday morning at 6 a.m., with the trip to Vinton taking about two hours to get there, noted Alex Antonowitsch, an LUS spokesman, in an email.

LUS workers were joined by crews from GRU.

Crews are assessing the damage and assisting in restoration efforts including replacing poles and fixing lines.

Antonowitsch said that 14 workers from LUS and 11 or 12 from GRU traveled to Vinton.

He noted that there is no estimate yet in terms of how long LUS workers are expected to stay in Vinton “as we need to assess the extent of the damage. Depending on the extent, more crews may come in.”

“We have gone to help Vinton several times in the past,” said LUS Electric Operations Manager Greg Labbe’. “Once we arrive, we will assess the amount of damage and what we will need to get everyone back up with power,“ he said on Aug. 29.

Jon Hand, Executive Director for Electric Cities of Alabama, reported that crews from the public power communities of Opelika, Troy and Tuskegee have deployed to Vinton to work on distribution system rebuild.

Hand said that the total number of workers from the Alabama public power utilities is 25.

Lafayette, La., which was also hit by Laura, received mutual aid from several public power utilities last week. Crews from the City of Tallahassee, Fla., were pre-positioned in the city before the arrival of Laura.

Crews from GRU, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., Fort Pierce, Fla., Lakeland, Fla., and Jacksonville (JEA) arrived on Thursday after Laura passed through Lafayette.

Crews from Fort Pierce, Lakeland and Tallahassee are headed to Abbeville, La., Antonowitsch reported on Aug. 29, while crews from JEA is assisting investor-owned utility Cleco.

He also noted that LUS sent was sending a crew to Gueydan, La., to assist in mutual aid.

COVID-19 precautions

Antonowitsch also detailed the precautions LUS workers took to avoid potential exposure to COVID-19.

Implementing procedures were established when teams arrived in Lafayette, he noted. Operations were based out of the Cajundome, the arena for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

“All workers had to first go through a temperature gun check of the forehead, then a checklist of questions asking about potential exposure,” he said.

If the temperature was 100 or higher the worker went to a COVID staging area to wait and re-check temperature. 

There were instances of residual heat from workers sitting in a hot car that would show high temperatures when using the thermometer gun.  If the temperature didn’t go down, a rapid COVID test was available that would provide for a quick blood draw test. In addition, personal protective equipment and masks were made available to workers.

Public power crews work to restore power after Hurricane Laura makes landfall

August 27, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 27, 2020

Public power utility crews were hard at work restoring power to communities hit by Hurricane Laura, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the early morning hours of Aug. 27.

The hurricane made landfall in Louisiana with 150 mph winds and more than nine feet of storm surge “that ripped buildings to pieces, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and inundated the coastline,” the Weather Channel reported on its website.

The Department of Energy reported that as of 7:30 AM EDT, there were approximately 484,000 customer outages reported across the states of Louisiana and Texas, including approximately 386,000 customer outages in Louisiana.

Prior to the hurricane’s making landfall, crews from public power utilities across several states had already deployed or were on their way to Louisiana.

The Florida Municipal Electric Association (FMEA) on Aug. 26 reported that it had assembled public power crews from across the state to aid with power restoration efforts in Louisiana following Hurricane Laura. Approximately 25 public power personnel from Tallahassee have already arrived in Lafayette, Louisiana, and another 80 were on their way to assist Lafayette Utilities System, a public power utility, FMEA said.

Along with Florida, crews were also deployed from Missouri, Texas, Georgia and Alabama to Louisiana. Public power utilities from other states were on standby and ready to send crews if needed.

On Aug. 27, the Missouri Public Utility Alliance (MPUA) reported that more municipal utility electric line crews from two more Missouri communities were on their way to Louisiana, responding to the call for recovery help in the wake of Hurricane Laura.

Organized by MPUA, additional lineworker crews from Nixa and Rolla are on their way to Alexandria, Louisiana to assist that city in recovery from power outages.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, crews from the utilities in Hannibal, Harrisonville, Higginsville and Macon travelled to Alexandria to prepare for anticipated damage to the city’s electric system. The combined response now numbers 24 lineworkers from the six utilities.

“Our hometown utility professionals are eager to help in emergencies like this,” said MPUA mutual aid coordinator Mike Conyers. “Working together as communities and states to help our neighbors is fundamental to how our crews work.”

MPUA organized the network response from member utilities after preparedness coordinators at Alexandria called for mutual aid assistance from public power utilities. 

Lafayette Utilities System (LUS) on Aug. 27 noted in a tweet that LUS crews “have been up since early morning restoring power from downed lines.”

Texas

Meanwhile, in an interview with Public Power Daily, Russ Keene, Executive Director of the Texas Public Power Association (TPPA), reported that a total of eight municipally owned electric utilities (MOUs) that were in the track of the storm. Two of the eight MOU cities — Liberty and Livingston – were not affected.

Prior to the system making landfall, TPPA and member utilities did an effective job in terms of preparing to offer mutual aid, if needed, Keene noted.

Six cities — Hemphill, Jasper, Kirbyville, Newton, San Augustine and Timpson – were hit with power outages as a result of Laura.

TPPA’s response was slightly delayed as Internet and wireless outages during the morning of Aug. 27 created an unexpected lack of situational awareness.

The six cities are “almost in a north south line right along the Texas-Louisiana border – just inside Texas. They’re considered Deep East Texas,” Keene said.

“They were right in the middle of the forecasted path. It apparently went a little more eastward into Louisiana than thought so it therefore didn’t affect Liberty and Livingston, which are a little bit west out of that line of these other six cities,” Keene said.

With respect to the six cities, “we don’t know the extent of the damage to their city systems yet. We know that at least two transmission lines are down – one owned by Entergy and another owned by the Jasper-Newton Electric co-op,” he added.

The six cities “are all completely without power right now,” Keene said, although he noted expectations are for full restoration within 48 hours, with a key variable being how quickly the transmission lines can be repaired.

“We are learning the extent of the damage to the city systems,” he noted. “We don’t know full extent of the damage to the city systems, but we know it includes poles and wires down” in numerous locations.

He noted that New Braunfels Utilities is rolling trucks to help Hemphill “and they expect a full two-day restoration.”

Texas public power utility Kerrville Public Utility Board has dispatched crews to help Kirbyville with power restoration efforts, while another public power utility in the state — Lubbock Power & Light — has sent crews to help Newton.

In addition, the city of Seguin, Texas, is providing mutual aid to San Augustine, while Garland Power & Light is going to provide assistance to Jasper.

Keene said that APPA’s Mutual Aid Working Group (MAWG) “has been terrific to work with for more than a week and has been very impressive overall.”

He also noted that “we started last Friday at TPPA internally with those eight Deep East Texas members” in terms of helping them prepare.

“I think we were, in a sense, overprepared – at least from the mutual aid perspective,” he said.

Construction starts on NYPA large-scale, 20-MW energy battery storage project

August 27, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 27, 2020

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) on Aug. 26 announced the start of construction on a large-scale, 20-megawatt (MW) energy battery storage project in Northern New York, one of the largest such projects in the nation.

The facility, located in Franklin County at the top of the state, will advance progress toward achieving New York’s target to have 3,000 MW of energy storage deployed by 2030, NYPA noted.

The project is expected to be in service early next year.

The battery storage facility, which is located in Chateaugay, adjacent to an existing NYPA substation, will be the second of its kind in New York State — the only battery storage project that is New York State owned and operated.

The project will include a unique one-hour lithium-ion battery system that will help New York State meet its peak power needs by absorbing excess generation that can be discharged later, based upon the changing needs of the grid.

The NYPA Board of Trustees approved $23.8 million for the project in 2019 at its July 30 meeting. The total estimated project cost is $29.8 million, $6 million of which was initially approved by the NYPA board in October 2018.

NYPA said that increasing energy storage capabilities also helps to realize New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s climate change mitigation policies which aim to reduce the state’s carbon footprint to zero by 2040 and ensure that 70 percent of the state’s electricity supply comes from renewables by 2030. 

The work is being undertaken by O’Connell Electric Company, Inc., of Victor, N.Y. in Ontario County in the Finger Lakes region. The firm was awarded a three-year engineering, procurement and construction contract in the amount of $22.6 million by the NYPA Board of Trustees last year in a competitive bidding process.

The project’s strategic location in Northern New York is significant in encouraging efficient, reliable renewable energy growth, NYPA said.

More than 80 percent of the region’s electricity supply comes from renewable resources, including NYPA’s St. Lawrence hydropower project and more than 650 MW of local wind generation. Having the capability to store renewable energy for later delivery also will help eliminate current transmission constraints that can prevent energy from being delivered to consumers.

The energy storage system will supply the New York wholesale energy and ancillary service markets and will contribute to the reliability of the supply of electric power in New York.  

“This transformative energy storage project will enable us to integrate more renewable energy, such as hydro, wind and solar, into the New York State grid,” said Gil Quiniones, NYPA president and CEO.

“These large-scale batteries are one of the keys to growing renewables,” he said. “With these projects, we can store energy for times of high demand and give our transmission system greater flexibility and resiliency. Storing renewable energy also is critical to helping New York State meet Governor Cuomo’s aggressive clean energy targets and to fighting climate change.”

The American Public Power Association earlier this year launched the Public Power Energy Storage Tracker, a resource for association members that summarizes energy storage projects undertaken by members that are currently online.

WAPA, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation tapped hydro to help response to Calif. energy emergency

August 26, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 26, 2020

The Western Area Power Administration and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation joined forces between Aug. 14 and 19 to generate and transmit roughly 5,400 megawatt-hours in response to California’s energy emergency, the two federal agencies reported on Aug. 25.

The two federal agencies are responsible for generating, marketing and transmitting hydropower from federally owned hydroelectric dams to preference customers. In an emergency situation, the hydropower can be called upon to limit outages and stabilize the grid.

Reclamation generated the power using its fleet of federal hydroelectric dams in the West, including, among others, 18 dams in the Central Valley Project in northern California; Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona; Hoover Dam on the border of Arizona and Nevada; Morrow Point Dam in western Colorado; Davis Dam in Arizona; and Parker Dam in California.

WAPA then transmitted the energy via its high-voltage transmission system into the California Independent System Operator’s service territory, while continuing to reliably serve WAPA’s customer loads.

WAPA’s Sierra Nevada region provided more than 3,300 MWh, while the Colorado River Storage Project provided nearly 1,900 MWh and Desert Southwest provided more than 200 MWh.

 In some cases, WAPA was able to offset this generation and continue to meet its customers’ demand by increasing hydropower output from other dams to provide power to local areas. 

The agencies noted that hydroelectric dams are crucial sources of reserve energy in case of system emergencies. The large reservoirs, such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell, function as enormous batteries and can quickly dispatch a large amount of electricity on the grid.

WAPA and Reclamation have plans in place with a number of utilities to provide emergency power from federal hydroelectric powerplants.  

CAISO implemented rotating outages

On Friday, Aug. 14, CAISO declared a Stage 3 electrical emergency that lasted a little over two hours, with  rotating outages throughout the state for about the first hour. A second Stage 3 emergency was declared Saturday night for twenty minutes.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday, Aug. 17, signed an emergency proclamation to free up energy capacity.

In announcing the emergency proclamation, Newsom also said he had sent a letter to CAISO, the California Public Utilities Commission, and the California Energy Commission demanding an investigation into “the service disruptions that occurred over the weekend and the energy agencies’ failure to predict and mitigate them.”

Calling the blackouts “unacceptable and unbefitting of the nation’s largest and most innovative state,” Newsom said the agencies failed to anticipate the event and to take necessary actions to ensure reliable power supplies.

Newsom also applauded the efforts of state officials who worked to bring more energy resources online, including generation from “sources like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the California State Water Project and investor-owned utilities.”

APPA, other groups urge House leaders to include energy innovation legislation in agenda

August 25, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 25, 2020

The American Public Power Association recently joined a coalition of 38 organizations, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in support of including energy innovation legislation in the House’s fall legislative agenda.

“Our diverse organizations recognize and agree that climate change is an important national priority that demands Congressional attention,” APPA and the other organizations said in their Aug. 17 letter to Pelosi and McCarthy.

“While we may not agree on everything, we believe there is much common ground upon which all sides of the debate can come together to begin to address climate change, promote American technological leadership, and foster continued economic growth,” the groups said.

“There is a growing consensus that the development and commercialization of new technologies are an important factor that will determine how quickly and at what cost greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced,” the letter said.

The groups noted several bills that could be brought to the House floor this fall to address energy and climate technology and innovation, including:

APPA and the other organizations also highlighted H.R. 5428, the Grid Modernization Research and Development Act.

This bill would authorize several DOE research and development efforts, including a smart grid regional demonstration initiative, a program related to grid modeling, sensing, and advanced operation and controls, and a program on integrating electric vehicles onto the grid.

The bill also would create a grant and technical assistance program for which electric utilities, as well as state, local, and tribal governments, are eligible, to improve grid resiliency.

The groups note that the list of bills included in the letter is not comprehensive, but represents bipartisan efforts, that if signed into law, could accelerate technological breakthroughs and adoption of cleaner or more efficient energy technologies.

The letter is available here.

Impressive reliability track record for Clark Public Utilities reflects utility-wide focus

August 24, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 24, 2020

Washington state public power utility Clark Public Utilities has developed an impressive track record when it comes to reliability and keeping power outages to a minimum.

“I think there’s really a commitment from the top down within the whole utility to keep service interruptions at a minimum and, when they do happen, to get them fixed as quickly as possible,” said Ryan Kerr,  Manager of Systems Engineering and Planning at Clark Public Utilities, in an Aug. 14 interview with the American Public Power Association.

More specifically, Kerr noted that there is a “big commitment” from Clark Public Utilities when it comes to proactive vegetation management, which is done on a three-year cycle. In addition, the utility also utilizes tree wire in spots where tree trimming is difficult.

Kerr also highlighted the utility’s infrastructure monitoring and service crew protocols as substantial drivers behind the short response times. “I think the fact that we have a 24-hour dispatch center, and servicemen out there on patrol all the time who are ready at a moment’s notice when the dispatchers report an incident,” helps with power restoration efforts.

Dameon Pesanti, Media Specialist at Clark Public Utilities, emphasized the point that the utility has “built a culture of the customer’s interest above all else. We’re owned by them so we want to provide them the best service.”

Starting with the CEO of Clark Public Utilities, “down to our part-time employees,” the focus on reliability is front and center across the utility, Pesanti said. When power outages occur, “everybody jumps on it to get the lights back on and keep customers informed.”

Clark Public Utilities recognized by APPA

Earlier this year, Clark Public Utilities received a “Diamond” level designation from APPA under APPA’s Reliable Public Power Provider (RP3) program.  The Diamond level is the highest level of RP3 recognition.

The program recognizes utilities that demonstrate high proficiency in reliability, safety, workforce development, and system improvement. Utilities keep the RP3 designation for three years.

“Reliability and safety are the priority in all areas of operation in this utility,” Lena Wittler, CEO/General Manager of Clark Public Utilities, said in April. “The RP3 review thoroughly examines the practices and measures implemented across the organization to support those priorities. The fact that we’ve earned the highest level of recognition, with a rarely achieved perfect score, is a reflection of our ongoing commitment to delivering outstanding service, consistently and professionally.”

“I’m always excited to see exceptional reliability at public power utilities,” said Alex Hofmann, Vice President, Engineering Services, at APPA. “Keeping the lights on represents a huge value to the commercial, industrial, and residential customers serviced by Clark PUD.”

A recent article in the Battle Ground, Washington-based newspaper The Reflector notes that the average number of power outages a customer experienced in 2018 was 1.65. For Clark Public Utilities customers the average was 0.43, the newspaper reported.

In his interview with APPA, Kerr said that in 2016, the public power utility started to focus on Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) indices “and bringing those to the table.”

Clark Public Utilities for a long time has had an internal goal program with set metrics for reliability, cost-control and customer satisfaction. The reliability goal uses measures similar to the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) with average time a utility customer is out of power during a specified timeframe, and employees watch the progress against the goal as a measure of success.

Kerr noted that one of the tools that Clark Public Utilities utilizes to minimize outages is remote device control. This helps in situations such that when there is an outage, “dispatch can participate in the switching order along with the servicemen out in the field, so it helps our restoration time and adds to the number of eyes on the system.”

Substations

Washington has the second-highest risk in the U.S. of large and damaging earthquakes because of its geologic setting, according to the Washington Geological Survey. Kerr noted that when it comes to substations, Clark Public Utilities takes a long-term approach in terms of things like seismic upgrades and “installing a lot of flexible connections between devices.” Clark Public Utilities has also taken steps to tie down its power transformers.

 “We think we’ll be able to get through our system in the next five years or so. We’re not trying to get so it’s going to be a hundred percent ride through, but anything we can do ahead of time to provide for a better restoration time following a seismic event is what the utility is aiming for,” Kerr said.

With respect to specific projects, he noted that Clark Public Utilities is working to replace its oldest substation near Washington’s border with Oregon along the Columbia River.

Along with the substation’s age (constructed in 1964), Kerr noted that another factor driving this project is a new $1.5 billion waterfront development project, so “we need a little extra capacity out of there.” The project is in downtown Vancouver, Washington.

The substation project, which is tied into two transmission lines, will help boost reliability by compensating for times when one of the lines experiences an outage. “In the past, it wasn’t really set up that way. We’ll have some duel redundancy” into the future for a large chunk of customers in the downtown Vancouver area, he said.

How PREPA brought earthquake-damaged plant online ahead of Isaias

August 24, 2020

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
August 24, 2020

In January, it looked like one of Puerto Rico’s biggest power plants would be out of commission for a year. Instead, one unit of the damaged plant was able to start generating power just days before Tropical Storm Isaias hit the island.

The speedy restoration of the Costa Sur plant is “by far the biggest success PREPA (Puerto Rico Electricity Power Authority) has ever had,” Todd Filsinger, senior managing director at Filsinger Energy and chief financial advisor to PREPA, said.

The two-unit, 820-megawatt (MW) Costa Sur plant, PREPA’s largest, was knocked out of service on Jan. 7 by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake that cracked foundations, ruptured pipes, split water tanks, and damaged a turbine and the plant’s control room.

Costa Sur provides about one quarter of PREPA electrical supplies and is one of the public power utility’s most efficient plants. Without it, PREPA was forced to use its more expensive diesel peaking plants and to rely more heavily on purchased power from third party generators such as EcoElectrica and a coal-fired plant owned by AES Corp.

Before actual repair work on Costa Sur could begin, however, a lot of negotiations and financial arrangements had to be made, all of which were complicated by Puerto Rico’s financial troubles – the island, and then PREPA, entered into a bankruptcy like process in 2017 – and in that same year was devastated by two hurricanes, Irma and Maria.

Soon after the earthquake in January, there were discussions with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for temporary generators, but that solution was thwarted by technicalities.

Meanwhile, plans to repair Costa Sur had to be approved by regulators, including the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau and the Financial Oversight and Management Board.

As part of the bankruptcy process, PREPA created a project management office (PMO) that reports directly to the head of the utility. The discipline, experience and focus of the PMO were key to the rapid restoration of Costa Sur, Filsinger said.

As the groundwork for the restoration efforts for Costa Sur began, it became apparent there were opportunities to negotiate a better deal in the form of lower prices and tighter schedules, Fernando Padilla, director of PREPA’s project management office, said.

When negotiations were completed and financing was in place – over 80% of the $40.2 million total cost is being covered by PREPA’s insurance – the actual physical work of restoration began in May.

The work was undertaken by a team of about 360 contractors and PREPA employees, many of them union workers, who worked in 24-hour shifts. PREPA was able to begin ramping up the 410-MW Unit #5 at Costa Sur within 24 hours of Isaias hitting Puerto Rico. Unit #5 is now fully operational, and Unit #6 is expected to be online by late October.

Among the key lessons learned from the restoration efforts, Padilla says, is to stay in close contact with the workers. He walked the power plant’s floor four times a day. “If you are not close to the people,” it is difficult for them to understand the scope and progress of their efforts. “It is hard to translate that from a piece of paper.”

“It is about having first eyes and hands on the problems to seek immediate solutions,” Padilla said. “Being there allows you to understand problems, employee needs, project risks, and to address contractors’ and employees’ problems and even creates opportunities to make work more efficient and quicker,” Padilla said. A daily management presence “also provides employees with the comfort that our executive team is fully committed” to bringing the plant back online quickly and motivates employees and signals urgency to contractors, he added.

The other lesson is the benefit of using a mix of contractors and public power union employees. “PREPA’s union expertise was indispensable due to their knowledge of the asset and its operation,” and union labor was lower cost compared with contractors of the same level of expertise, said Padilla.

Looking to the future, Padilla and his PMO team are working on other projects that will enable PREPA to be prepared for other disasters that befall Puerto Rico. Among them, vegetation management projects on 600 miles of the island’s electrical wires and a future that includes more decentralized power resources.