Catalytic converters placed on two Cat engines in compliance hardware update
By late in the day today (Friday, April 8), the two Caterpillar (Cat) engines of the City of Mountain Lake’s Municipal Utility Power Plant had been upgraded with compliance hardware – and will be generating cleaner energy when the engines are operational.
A duo from Fairbanks-Morse have been in the city making the updates along with Municipal Utility Electric Superintendent Ron Melson and Pat Oja, of the Municipal Utility Electric Department. The upgrades are part of the required RICE/NESHAP (Reciprocating Internal Combustion Engines/National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants) compliance hardware.
The Municipal Utility’s two Cat engines – along with three Fairbanks-Morse engines – have the capability of powering the entire City of Mountain Lake. The decision was made in January of this year to only upgrade the two Cat electric generators. However, the trio of Fairbanks-Morse engineers will need to be up on the docket for the updates as well in order to cover the city’s resident, business and manufacturing needs.
A catalytic converter was placed on each engine. A catalytic converter is an emissions control device that converts toxic pollutants in exhaust gas to less toxic pollutants by catalyzing aredox reaction (oxidation or reduction).
It was required that the upgraded engines must be operational by May 1, 2016 to meet United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements. If the updated engines were not operational by June 1 (the start of the MISO planning year – MISO is a link in the safe, cost-effective delivery of electric power across all or parts of 15 states in the United States, including Minnesota, and the Canadian province of Manitoba) the utility would have needed to buy electrical capacity for usage for the entire year (June 1, 2016 to June 1, 2017) That would have meant that the utility would have needed to buy 3.4 MW (megawatts) of capacity.
The accepted quote for the project was $81,659 from Fairbanks-Morse. Electric reserves are being used to self-fund the project. In addition, the city and utility entered into an agreement with Utilities’ Plus Energy Service (UPES) to oversee the project for $13,650.
In prepping for the probable need to update the utility’s remaining three engines in order to cover the city’s electrical usage when needed to be run, the Mountain Lake City Council has adopted a resolution for the possibility of bonding for that project.
