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Federal CO2 Legislation Falters While EPA Marches On
It now looks unlikely that passage of federal cap & trade legislation for greenhouse gasses will occur this year, despite the American Clean Energy and Security Act (Waxman-Markey) having passed in the house, a similar but more stringent version (Boxer-Kerry) having passed out of Committee, and the Obama Administration being strongly in favor of such legislation.
I imagine this development must be unsettling for the senior management of companies such as Duke Energy, FPL, NRG, and PSEG that have worked so hard to push for a legislative approach that balances acknowledgment of the potential consequences of climate change with the need to maintain the reliable and affordable supply of electricity upon which our society and way of life depends....
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Better late than never...Users Summit Photo Montage
Check out this photo montage from our Users Summit in Newport, Rhode Island back in June.
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Current Operational Demands on Coal Units
Coal-fired generating units are currently operating in ways that have never been experienced by the industry before or at least not for many years. The economic downturn has lowered demand significantly for many of our customers. Natural gas prices have fallen making many gas-fired plants competitive or lower cost than coal-fired generation. In several areas of the US, installation of wind turbines has resulted in previously base-loaded coal plants running at low loads for long periods of time. When all these issues are combined, the operations dynamics vary dramatically.
Recently I was talking with one of our customers and the two large units at his station had been off line for three weeks due to lack of demand. These units are in a central location...
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Boiler Optimization Webcast at Xcel Tolk; Oct.15th; 11AM/EST
If you can't attend NeuCo's upcoming Plant Optimization Tour co-hosted by Xcel Tolk, you can hear LIVE HIGHLIGHTS and DIALOGUE during this pre-recorded webcast.
David Head, Controls Technican at Xcel Tolk, will discuss how combustion and sootblowing optimization software is helping Xcel's Tolk station to:
Reduce NOx emissions while adhering to CO limits
Improve temperatures, sprays and boiler efficiency
Adjust to changing dispatch profiles due to wind power
Space is limited. Register Now: [Read More]
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The ProcessLink� Rules Engine: Guiding the Boiler with Your Own Expertise
NeuCo’s CombustionOpt® system is broadly known for its use of adaptive Neural Networks for both modeling and optimizing the combustion process to improve boiler performance. More recently you’ve heard me talk about the tremendous value customers have obtained from CombustionOpt implementations that combine Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Neural Network technologies. Today I want to focus one of the ProcessLink Platform’s lesser-known technologies -- one that is becoming increasingly important to CombustionOpt installations: Condition-Based Expert Rules.
Expert System Evolution
Condition-Based Expert Rules have always promised benefit for combustion optimization software systems, but earlier solutions -- including early versions...
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Announcing NeuCo's Plant Optimization Tour
I’m sorry that it’s taken me more than two weeks to post a new blog. After Coal-Gen, I got caught up customer site visits, a backlog of emails & voicemails and of course, summer vacation. But now that summer has “officially” ended and September is here I’m excited to announce a new opportunity that NeuCo’s developing; The Plant Optimization Tour.
Similar to our annual Users Summits, these 2-day site visits will enable NeuCo customers and others interested in our ProcessLink® technology to visit showcase sites with different boiler types and operational challenges every two to three months throughout the year. Each site will highlight specific project implementation strategies and showcase how...
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NeuCo, Inc. has launched the first weblog exclusively devoted to power plant optimization. TheOptimizationBlog.com is a place for NeuCo, its customers, and others interested in real-time asset optimization to connect online. Optimization and power industry experts will blog about everything from optimization technologies, emissions regulations and NeuCo's own product development, to trends in the power generation industry. It's also a place for customers to share their thoughts and insights on power industry issues and give feedback to NeuCo about their own optimization experiences.
Join the conversation at www.theoptimizationblog.com, or through NeuCo's website, www.neuco.net.
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