Life in the washing machine 'spin cycle'

 "It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron." - H. L. Mencken

 What we used to call a "cold snap" in my childhood is now called a "polar vortex" in climate-speak.  Extreme weather is nothing new - it's just new if you are only recently an adult and paying too much attention to alarming news stories :)

The cold snap is upon us now, but it seems to be abating.  It's caused some issues at work, but nothing that we weren't used to dealing with.  

All of the normal outdoor water-leg flow and level transmitters iced up and began reading erratically - totally normal.  All the boiler drum level transmitters acted up, so the operators began running things in manual.  We contacted the dispatcher and requested to be left at the current load until the weather warmed enough that the heat trace could thaw things.  All pretty typical for a cold snap.

Out of the blue we got a call from the utility, asking if we could go down to minimum load, because apparently there was a fuel supply issue.  We told them that going to minimum would be difficult and risky, and that from a reliability standpoint it would be preferable to continue running at the current power level.  Later on they called and said we might have to shut down to conserve fuel.  Of all the crazy squares on my Bingo card, shutting down due to lack of pipeline gas in the middle of a sub-zero freeze was not one of them.

This notice was sent out to all Avista customers around the same time-frame.

Avista is a regional utility that provides electricity and natural gas to much of Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington State.  They purchase their natural gas from TC Energy, formerly TransCanada.  The natural gas is produced from well fields and processing facilities north of Edmonton, Alberta.  The cold snap hit a bit harder there, reaching -40F (-40C).  As you can see in the notice above, Avista is blaming their gas supplier for the problem.

 

The power plant I work at is probably the largest consumer of natural gas in the Avista service area - so it makes sense that they would try to conserve limited natural gas for residential use during extreme cold.  I won't minimize the cold snap - it's exceedingly dangerous when it's windy and the temperatures are below zero F.  Residential heating should absolutely have priority in this situation.  

On Friday I went home for the three-day holiday weekend (Martin Luther King), fearing they would shut the plant down in these god-awful temperatures and wind.   Once I arrived home, I headed over to the next town to plow the church parking lot yet again.  While I was in the midst of plowing, the boss called and joked, "Don't smoke any weed or get drunk, we're probably going in to work tonight."

I drove home after plowing, and made it about three spoonfuls into a bowl of chili when the dreaded call came at 6pm.  I hadn't yet taken off my work boots, so I grabbed my hat and went back to work - on the phone while driving, giving a few instructions to the on-shift crew.  

The shut down was fraught because none of the instruments were giving good data and a lot of the equipment was running in manual, and had to be feathered down as the heat came off.  It's no big deal when the plant instrumentation works, but it's quite unpleasant when you haven't much idea what's going on in the boiler.

I was there for about three hours, along with everyone else we could get hold of on short notice.  It was very windy and -10 degrees F (-23C).  Pretty miserable - not gonna lie about that.  

Below:  Afterwards in the control room, discussing how to keep the boiler from freezing and bursting tubes.  Guy in the light colored shirt is the frazzled control room operator.

The plan was to come in Saturday morning and decide how to proceed.  We hadn't made arrangements to dump the rapidly-cooling water from the boiler, and therefore had no room for it in the cooling tower basin.  The plant's operating permit does not allow us to discharge any water at all, so there was no place to drain the boiler to... :(

At 4:30 am Saturday my boss called - having not slept well - and asked what I thought we should do, and said we are all going to get fired because the boiler tubes would all burst in a couple more days.  I told him I'd be in at 6am and we would figure something out.

I got to work, and eventually came up with the bright idea that maybe we could run the gas turbine up to full speed a few times a day, but not tie the generator online or make any electricity.  We figured out how much fuel that would take (250 kscf for 30 minutes), and called our Avista contact to request 4x per day to just run the gas turbine for maintenance heat. 

We got the OK to proceed with that, and were beginning to making the first run to determine how much that would help.  Then fate intervened, and there was an equipment breakdown that prevented the turbine from starting.  I spent the next several hours poring over electrical diagrams, trying to help the electricians find the source of the problem.  "The problem" turned out to be three different electrical issues, one of which was intermittent.

Meanwhile, other people had been called in to replace and refill propane cylinders for all the heaters that we'd had to set up the night before.  Some of these were on top of the boiler, and had to come down on the chain hoist - 10 minutes atop the boiler, standing out in the wind holding a button on the controller - each way. 

Other people had to get the pipe thawing machine and strip off insulation to clamp the leads to to the pipe, up in the air.  The pipe leading to the top of the demineralized storage tank froze, so we could not make up pure water until that was thawed out.

Below:  A pipe thawing transformer. 

By the time we got all those issues sorted out, the fuel issue had been resolved, and we had been cleared for a re-start.  We went straight from troubleshooting several very difficult issues and right into a blind plant start-up in howling wind and frigid conditions.  One of the more challenging work days I've  experienced.

The start went reasonably well, given the difficulties of lacking accurate information on levels and flows.  Eleven hours after arriving, I went home exhausted, with instructions to call if anyone needed anything.  That call came in at 1:30 am.  Fortunately it was just a query, which I was happy to answer - even if I didn't get back to sleep again.   

At home the only thing of note is that the water supply line froze for the master bathroom toilet.  This happened once before during a cold snap.  The issue is in the crawlspace under the master bedroom/bath.  There are louvered vents that get opened during the warm months to prevent mold, and closed during the cold months to prevent freezing the pipes.  

There is a vent right next to the water supply for the toilet though, and if it's cold and windy enough, it can freeze the water line.  It's no big deal, because the line is made of PEX, but it's annoying.  I'd previously resolved the issue by installing some squares of styrofoam insulation behind that particular vent.   Unfortunately, over time, the tape had come loose and the wind blew the styrofoam loose, allowing -7F degree air to blow against the water line.

Below: The nearest vent is the one that the water supply line sits behind.

 I was in the crawlspace yesterday for 30 minutes or so with a blow-dryer, flashlight, and some duct tape, but the line still hasn't thawed out yet.  I'm not sure how frozen it is or where now.  I'll probably just stick a heater in there today and see how it goes, then once the line is thawed, stuff a big pillow of fiberglass insulation in the hole where the vent is.  

 Update:  I tried using a little under-desk heater all day long to warm the crawlspace.  It was not up to the task.

Just to the right of the two white pipes at the far end is the frozen water line.  It will thaw out - I just don't know when...

Below:  The supply pipe that is frozen somewhere underneath the floor.  At least we have the flush water bottles handy to refill the tank - we use these when the power goes out for long periods.  Once the power is gone, the well doesn't work.

My 94 year old mom came up for the Christmas Holiday, and we bought her a sweatshirt that says "Life is Good".  You know what?  Life *is* good, and maybe overcoming challenges is part of what makes it good.