BOARD01506

• Board Meeting Date: 5/12/1978
• Description: Agenda, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

MR. FETCHER: How much energy is used to operate the scrubbers, in terms
of plant output? :

MR. BUGAS: We are estimating -- let's see. Each unit will gross 447
megawatts, and we will get net 400, out of the unit. So, basically, a
little over 10 percent of the energy is used for all station service,
plus all the operating electrostatic precipitators, raw water cone en- I
trators. Incidentally, the raw water concentrators is purely a
distillery. We just, you know, redistill the water and dropout solids,
and eventually it gets so concentrated that it is not economical for us
to do it. The raw water concentrator at Craig alone cost $18 million.
The electrostatic pre.cipitators at that station cost about $36 million.

We have in environmental control equipment -- there is over $200 million
in all of the environmental control equipment at that station. The
station cost about 700 million.

MR. SPARKS: So, roughly, a little less than a third of the cost is going
for environmental requirements?

MR. BUGAS:That is right.

MR. SPARKS: We keep seeing figures put out by the environmental organi-
zations about how cheap this",is.: They dispute constantly the costs of
this environmental control. But all the figures that we see in our
office indicate that approximately a third of all the costs are in not
only capital costs but. in the cost of operation as well, and they are
adding a tremendous cost burden to the consumer.

I was a little shocked at your figure of 20 acre-feet per megawatt. .
Now, that is quite a bit higher than we ~ave been using in our studies
of the energy demands in Colorado. :So that comes to 20,000 acre-feet
per. thousand megawatts. And we have been using a figure of. roughly
15,000 acre-feet.

Now, you say the increase now in the consumption of water is attributed
again to a large extent to these limestone scrubbers?

MR. BUGAS: Wet limestone scrubbers. That is adding a rather large amount
'of water to the:station uses. And as'long as we have to keep putting
those on -- you know, we used to -- the numbers you are quoting are
about right without getting into the wet limestone scrubbers, and I
have to admit that we have had no experience with this and we are doing
some guessing. It is based upon assumptions that others,have helped us
make here on about the amount of water that is going to be used. After I
about a year or so of experience, we may refine those. numbers. But
at the present time, that seems like that is about the number we are
going to have to use.

The other possibility here -- and let, me point out that we have done
a tremendous amount of experimental work at the Nucla station on trying
to find a way other than using electrostatic precipitators, which are
very expensive, and I think that when you are dealing with a ~ariable
such as coal -- it is not a uniform product; you can't even say that

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