Conference: March 19-22, 2018
Exhibition: March 20-21, 2018

Gaylord Opryland Convention Center
Nashville, TN

PRB Coal Users’ Group Sessions

Monday, March 19

Join your colleagues at Studio A as we celebrate the winner of the PRB Coal Users’ Group Plant of
the Year and highlight student scholarship recipients and enjoy the comradery of the members of
the PRB Coal Users’ Group and the EEI Loss Control/Fire Protection Task Force. This celebration
will take place at Studio A which is part of the world-famous Grand Ole Opry House. Once home
to Hee Haw, Studio A continues to host television shows to this day including Crook & Chase,
CMT’s Crossroads and Invitation Only. Door prizes given throughout the evening. Catch the Shuttle from Delta Portico starting at 6:20 PM

Tuesday, March 20

  • Speakers
    • Chairman of PRB Coal Users' Group
      Abstract
      Andy S. Dobrzanski, Production Manager, DTE Energy
    • Chairman of EEI Loss Control Fire Protection Task Force
      Abstract
      Larry Shackelford P.E., Principal Engineer-Risk Management, Southern Company
The phone call that you never want but got! This presentation is a case study of a 1995 conveyor fire that shut down a major utility. Considering recent and continuing incidents involving conveyor fires, revisiting this significant event for an update on the discoveries, the causes, and the lessons learned so to prevent and to prepare for such an event.

Hear directly from the recipient of "the phone call," the lessons learned, and how one can apply the lessons so your phone doesn’t ring!
  • Speaker
    • Jim Wiseman, Board of Directors - Prb, Wiseman Consulting Services
Ameren Missouri has four (4) coal generating centers ranging in size from about 600 to 2500 MW. Recently, Ameren has started a multi-year program to improve issues with their coal handling systems for containment. Containment is needed as a first step to improve coal dusting, minimize dust suppression costs and improve worker safety. This program has just begun and coal handling issues for carry-back, dusting and spillage are being addressed. This presentation will cover the program outline, work to date and the justification for the upgrade work.
  • Roundtable Moderator
    • Ron Pircon, President/CEO, Benetech Inc.
  • Speaker
    • Ameren’s Coal Dust and Spillage Reduction Program
      Abstract
      Mike Schimmelpfennig, Principal Engineer, Ameren
The 2018 Recipient of the PRB Coal Users’ Group “Plant of the Year” Award will share their journey
of continuous improvements and industry better practices.
Kina survived a horrific workplace accident that left her fighting for her life. Kina is now a safety speaker, inspiring and motivating audiences all over with her presentation "Safety Beyond PPE". Kina’s message addresses the importance of training, safety procedures, and a great attitude can keep you and the people around you safe.
  • Speaker
    • Kina Repp, Safety Done Right
This will be an emotionally charged story of a great man, Wendell G. Smith, who tragically lost his life in an industrial accident on April 11, 2016. The story will demonstrate that extremely bad consequences can be experienced even with the most highly trained and skilled craftsmen. Specifically, the story will highlight how even the smallest changes in a work scope can take the very best down a path they never planned to travel. It will reinforce how decisions made by employees in the work environment not only affect them, but their family and co-workers as well. The story will leave a lasting impression on the listeners and will challenge them to passionately share Wendell’s story back at their respective companies and work location with a common desire to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.
  • Speaker
    • Alex Mosley, GM Major Maintenance & Continuous Improvement Programs, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
A conversation with your peers on today’s strategies for performing maintenance whether it’s the
emergent work task, routine maintenance tasks, or using leading indicators to plan work. How are
your peers getting it done?
  • Panelists
    • Erick Dieperink, Production Manager, Luminant
    • Mark Mayworm, Ex. Director, Gen. Support, Westar Energy
    • Roger Grable, Production Operations Manager, Omaha Public Power District (OPPD)
    • John P. Flannery, District Engineer, Babcock & Wilcox

Wednesday, March 21

The Federal EPA MATs Compliance Ruling requires that units be inspected and repaired on a regular basis to keep combustion and emissions control equipment in optimum conditions. It also requires emissions testing and tuning following the regular inspection and repair of combustion equipment, and the submittal of a report documenting all that was done. Our presentation will show how NRG Parish has worked to comply with the inspection, repair, testing, tuning and reporting requirements.
  • Speakers
    • Stephen Hedge, General Manager, Generation Solid Fuel, NRG
    • John Kush, Manager, Environmental, NRG
Process improvement is on-going at the Ottumwa Generating Station. This presentation highlights actions taken to reduce hazards associated with coal dust including technologies, practices, and lessons learned. Attendees will have "take-a-ways" that could be adopted and improvements achieved.
  • Speaker
    • Matthew Hanson, Regional Director, Alliant Energy
Great plans for emergency response without execution leads to disaster. Critical Infrastructure like power generation provides an essential service on which a community depends. This session will inform and help you explore plant emergency readiness. Not only from a power generation perspective but from an emergency first responder frame of mind. Westar Energy and Wakarusa Township Fire Department team up and give you tips on this vital collaboration that needs to happen to reduce risk for your people and infrastructure.
  • Speaker
    • Dan Atkeson, Generation EMS Coordinator, Westar Energy
This presentation describes the approach, testing, design, and documented results of a second generation tuning and control program developed at Leland Olds that dynamically follows the SNCR temperature window as a function of load and furnace cleaning, adjusting zone usage, air pressures, and injector concentrations as needed.
  • Speakers
    • Les Allery, Plant Engineer, Basin Electric Power Cooperative
    • Kentucky Sago, Performance Engineer, Basin Electric Power Cooperative
    • BILL SMITH, Principal, EAPC
    • Marc A. Cremer, Co-President, Reaction Engineering International
Drone Coal Pile Inventory Management discussing how Big Brown mine is using drones to better (faster, cheaper, and more accurately) quantify coal pile inventory relative to conventional technology. 
  • Speaker
    • Jeff Salomon, P.E., Engineering Manager, Big Brown & Turlington Mines, Luminant
Pulverizer Pressure Excursion Fleet Learnings Team discussing the results from Luminant’s mill puff fleet team highlighting the development of primary air duct explosion panels as a novel defense strategy. 
  • Speaker
    • Ben Lawrence, Principal Engineer, Luminant
Mercury Characterization discussing measuring mercury quantities and species at various points throughout the combustion and AQCS train to better understand where and how mercury exits in the process to refine the mercury compliance strategy for a specific unit. 
  • Speaker
    • Bill Mallory, Luminant
An audit of a number of coal handling facilities, identified a trend with fugitive coal dust at the Coal Plants throughout our AES Fleet. During an evaluation of the Stuart and Killen Stations in our DPL portfolio, the fugitive dust, coal handling and housekeeping regarding our dust mitigation, was found to be unacceptable. This presentation will review the changes made by AES to bring them up to par.
  • Speakers
    • Ronald Woodfin, Program Manager – AGIC Risk Engineering (Fire Protection & Emergency Response), AES Corporation
    • Byron P. Lawrence, VP & Unit Leader, Savage Services
    • Mark Wehmanen, Senior Vice President - Operations & Development, Savage Services
With the invention of the smart phone and tablets comes APPS. They can be a powerful instrument to help us do our work more efficiently. This is an open session to talk about APPS or other software applications – what are you using? How is it being used? Benefits?
  • Speaker
    • Byron Ellis, Sr. Staff Risk Engineer, Entergy Services, Inc.
Coal mill equipment failures can result in fire, costly repairs, forced outages and injury to personnel. Implementing a strategic maintenance program can help reduce cost, unplanned failures, and safety risks. This presentation will give an overview of technologies and processes Westar is using to improve the reliability and performance of their 34 coal mills.
  • Speaker
    • Patrick Stegman, Predictive Maintenance Coal Mill Engineer, Westar Energy
This presentation will explore the “building blocks” how Thailand’s first super-critical coal-fired power plant, today’s showcase of southeast Asia, proactively built a culture of continual improvement, applying hazards management which reduces combustible dust/coal spillage risk to the lowest level, and how it all made good business sense.
  • Speaker
    • Lou Holub, SVP-GHECo-One Plant Manager, Glow Company Limited
This presentation looks at managing risk through pre-incident planning. The most difficult hazards to manage surround the unknown.
However, we can significantly reduce the risk factor with static hazards such as those we find in our plants through proper pre-planning.
Remember, pre-planning does not end at your property line! To truly manage risk properly, we must include the members of the first
response community. We expect that they will show up when we dial 911 but never bother invite them out on a sunny day. Finally the
presentation expands on incident management which covers the hazards, response tactics and lessons learned necessary to safeguard
plant personnel and first responders while ensuring continuity of operations.
  • Speaker
    • Anthony Natale, Project Specialist, Consolidated Edison Co of New York Incorporated
Attemperators are used on utility boilers to provide the fine control of steam temperature to the turbine. The Attemperator components will experience significant thermal cycles and the resulting stress can result in cracking and failure of the components. A broken attemperator can cause failures in other areas by plugging tubes and spraying water on liners and steam leads. To complete repairs the unit must be off line and cool. It’s therefore important to conduct reqular inspections, that will allow you to plan for maintenance and repairs.
  • Speaker
    • Shane Bruner, Mechanical Engineer, AECI - Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc.
This presentation, from an operator’s view, how one company, two coal-fired power plants, manages dust. From technologies, to people, to practices, to procedures…this is how we do it!
  • Speaker
    • Cy Tilford, FIRE AND SAFETY LEADER, Nebraska Public Power District
Learn from your peers on what they have learned and have acted upon (applied) towards continual improvement so that it can be applied at your operations.
  • Speakers
    • Failure of a Suspended Scaffold and Rescue of Employees
      Abstract
      Jeff Mullins, Safety & Health Consultant, Lightstone Generation, LLC. - Gavin Power , LLC
    • Fire in the Walls and Ceiling
      Abstract
      *Christina Smith, STUDENT, Entergy
    • Fire in the Walls and Ceiling
      Abstract
      Ardes Johnson, Sr Lead Risk Engineer, Entergy Services, Inc.
    • Transformer Fire Protection
      Abstract
      Mitchell Bachuchin, Sr. Engineering Specialist, FM Global
PRB coal is used across the country at plants with different emissions control equipment and configurations. Plant operating conditions and different plant configurations (ESP only, ESP-WFGD, or SDA-FF) represent diverse challenges associated with Hg control, and the cost of MATS compliance. Often the cost for Hg compliance is varied from plant to plant, and higher than should be, based on the selection and operation of the Hg control technology. This presentation will cover case studies demonstrating different control strategies to lower mercury compliance costs based on different plant configurations and operating conditions while combusting PRB fuel.
  • Speaker
    • John Pavlish, Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, Midwest Energy Emissions Corp
When your power plant experiences a Coal Silo failure your responsibility are to repair the damage, and share the lessons you learned with others so that they may fix the issues before they have the same experience. This presentation will be a deep dive into a Coal Silo Collapse.
  • Speaker
    • Kristen Tuggle, Engineer, TVA

Thursday, March 22

"Conversations...amongst end users" This interactive forum is a closed session for those who use coal...generating companies, power plants, terminals employees. This year EEI Loss Control/Fire Protection Task Force members are also invited to provide additional perspective. Surveys from past users’ group meetings have shown that representatives value opportunities for candid discussions among themselves and open conversations with board members on issues raised during the first two days of the conference. This forum meets that request!. Let's converse about what's on your mind while you and your peers are together! After the forum, lunch will be served.

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