The motivation for these notes are the photos of 800+mw units.
- Plant Nameplate Capacity: 3,279.6 MW (Megawatts)
- Units and In-Service Dates: Unit 1: 817.2 MW (1971), Unit 2: 822.6 MW (1973), Unit 3: 822.6 MW (1973), Unit 4: 817.2 MW (1974)
[gem]
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| Greg Mallory posted John Luhn: How does the steam flow work on that? I'm seeing guard valves and throttles on each side in the foreground, but not making much sense from there. I'm used to marine plants where the throttle assembly is right on top of the nozzle block of the turbine. Austin Myers: John Luhn these are pretty complex steamers. If this plant is the same as Monroe Power Plant, the HP exhausts to reheaters in the boiler. From there hot reheat is directed back to the IP turbine, then exhausted to the two LPs via the large crossovers you see. The 4 lines arched above the HP is the throttle outlets to HP inlets. If they are rated the same as Monroe, it's 3600 psig at 1000 deg F on main steam to HP, and 700 psig at 1000 deg F hot reheat to IP. [HP would be high pressure, IP is intermediate pressure and LP is low pressure. The HP and IP turbines are dual flow and there are two LP turbines. The first two pipes in the foreground feed steam to the HP flow towards us and the next two feed the HP flow away from us. There are four corresponding pipes below so that all eight quadrants of the HP are fed steam. The last two smaller pipes feed the IP. The first big pipe is the crossover from the exhaust of the IP flow towards us to the first LP turbine. The second crossover takes the exhaust from the IP flow away from us to the second LP turbine. There are several comments discussing valves and GE vs. Westinghouse, but they are over my head.] |
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| Brennen Williams commented on Greg's post Looks like U2 and U3 at Monroe. Dennis DeBruler  So this is what 822.6mw looks like. Is this the largest that was ever made? I did the conversion, 800mw is over a million horsepower. How thick is the shaft? Greg Mallory Dennis DeBruler not the largest by any means. I have a few 900’s around me and there are 1000+ |
Most of the land on which the power plant is built is landfill.
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| Third photo posted by Marine Historical Society of Detroit via Dennis DeBruler "What the Port of Monroe looked like from above about a year earlier, on April 27, 1951. No vessels in view. Cropped U.S. Geological Survey aerial photo downloaded from their Earth Explorer website." |
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| 1 of 10 photos posted by Andrew Dean Detroit. He took it from the Herbert C. Jackson. Standing above the unloading arm as we arrive in Monroe off Lake Erie. |
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| David Schauer posted The Paul R. Tregurtha loading coal at MERC in Superior - the terminal's first shipment of the season. This is welcome news for the miners in the Powder River Basin, employees at BNSF and MERC, plus the fine folks at Interlake. Big Paul is loading for DTE's St. Clair and Monroe, Michigan generating stations. I had Gus grab a shot out the van window as we crossed the Blatnik Bridge today. 5/27/2020 |
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| David Schauer posted A beautiful calm Friday evening finds ASC's Walter J. McCarthy Jr. departing Duluth with 68,000 tons of coal for St. Clair and Monroe (DTE). |
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| Justin Wilson posted, cropped Detroit Edison Monroe Plant. Monroe Michigan. Unit 1. Back when I did a job there in 2016. |
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| Andrew Dean Detroit posted |
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| MonroeNews ("limited articles") [I see that they got rid of the last of the old smokestacks.] "DTE Energy has invested more than $2.3 billion at the Monroe plant to limit emissions, he said, adding that has helped reduce nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions." [And since it was built in the 1970s, it was probably built with particulate control. [gem]] |
I hate to see organizations such as Find Energy whining about coal use based on incompetence. I quote the MonroeNews article:
“Most of this lack of efficiency is the result of (the plants’) choice of fuel types, such as coal and other fossil fuels,” the organization wrote in its article. “The advanced age of these plants is another contributing factor, as they sometimes don’t take advantage of modern-day energy efficient equipment and methods.”If they had looked at the gem report, they would have seen that it is one of the more modern power plants using supercritical technology; they installed wet blue gas desulphurization, which Find Energy could have guessed if they had just looked at the smokestacks; and they installed selective catalytic reduction. I have not been able to determine if their ash pond is lined. Or by "modern-day energy efficient equipment and methods" do they mean wind and solar? It is one thing to close a 1921 300mw plant, it is another to take a pollution controlled 3,300mw plant offline. "The company is investing in cleaner energy, such as wind and solar parks and a natural gas plant, while also accelerating its coal plant retirements, he added. The River Rouge Power Plant, which used coal, was retired by the company last year [2021]. St. Clair and Trenton Channel coal power plants will be retired later this year [2022]. The Belle River Power Plant will cease burning coal by 2028. The Monroe plant, which is currently DTE Energy’s largest generator of power and accounts for about 40% of its electric generation, is set to be retired by 2040." [MonroeNews]
MonroeNews also mentions: "In 2020, the plant on average generated about 13.2 million megawatts per hour." I wonder what the source of that statement was because the unit "megawatts per hour" is nonsense. I presume the statement should be: "In 2020, the plant generated 13.2 million megawatt-hours." Power-Technology provides a figure of 14,046,398MWh. Since there are 8,760 hours in a year, 100% utilization of a 3.3gw plant is 28,908,000MWh. So they are using almost 50% of the plant's capacity. That strikes me as high since electric consumption goes way down at night. Obviously, this is a baseload plant and they shutdown other plants when the consumption goes down. This web page also indicated that Units 2 & 3 were supplied by Siemens instead of Westinghouse. Units 1 & 4 were supplied by GE Power.
Again this week, I have learned that Powder River Basin (PRB) coal is tricky to burn. (The first time was the Clifty Creek Power Plant.) They blend in Central Appalachian coal so that they are burning just 60-70% PRB. And they use southern PRB because "consuming northern PRB coals resulted in unacceptable problems." I didn't read the rest of the article because it is way over my head. [ScienceDirect] The PRB coal is shipped from the Twin Ports (Superior, WI and Duluth, MN) using lakers.
I saw a headline about Monroe being a super polluter on this page for about a second until it got replaced by nothing but ads and click bait. But the Google search results extracted the information: "Sep 29, 2016 — DTE's Monroe plant released more toxic arsenic into Lake Erie — 1,800 pounds, nearly a ton — than any other coal-fired power plant in the nation ..." (In what time period?) And MichiganRadio reports other organizations screaming that Monroe is a super polluter. A big plant is going to rank near the top of lists as long as they use absolute numbers. They need to rank plants using pollutant/watt-hour.
William M Bass posted four photos with the comment: "A little periodic outage porn."
William M Bass: Monroe Power Plant.
Justin Fountain: There are 4 units at this plants one is down for the yearly outage and 2 others are currently on economic reserve only 1 unit .running right now
Gary Braveman: Justin Fountain amazing. I remember when all 4 units ran almost always.
Justin Fountain: Gary Braveman yea me as well unless there was a tube luke or they brought it down for repair they always ran all 4
Bobby Williams: 340 FT LONG CLIMB.. [Up the scaffolding in the boiler?]
[The old stack was 800'.]
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