About the PACE Program:

        The PACE program is an accelerated program for recent college graduates and internal transfers to rapidly provide its participants with a wide range of experience within the company.  It challenges its participants with three separate, 6-month rotations over the period of 1 1/2 years. These rotations typically are in three separate departments of the company.  For the engineers participating in this program, moving to a new location for each rotation was a requirement.

Rotation 1  - Dynegy Midwest Generation Headquarters (Decatur, IL)

            Dynegy Midwest Generation controls five coal-fired and three gas turbine power plants located in Illinois.  During my rotation with this division of the company, I was involved at each of these plants with various projects and assignments.  The vast majority of my time was spent at the coal plants; Baldwin Energy Complex, Wood River, Havana, Vermilion, and Hennepin.

Plant Information System (PI System)

         One of my primary assignments with DMG was constructing screens for the new Plant Information System known as PI.  This system allowed real-time and trended data to be viewed and manipulated remotely from the plants and allowed the customization of its display screens by its users. I constructed information screens for the Havana Power Station that mirrored the plant's existing control room screens. These screens displayed data on unit load, boiler operating characteristics, flue gas system parameters, feedwater heater readings, DA heater readings, and turbine operating characteristics.

Cycle Alignment (Plant Energy Audit Survey)

           Dynegy Midwest Generation was in need of an annual energy audit for the steam lines within the coal-fired plants of their system.  I was assigned to develop this procedure, to develop the associated plant-specific valve lists, and to spearhead the implementation of the procedure at each of the coal power plants.   The most time consuming aspect of this assignment was researching the piping diagrams for each of the systems to identify  valves where potential energy loss could be occurring. The underlying goal of this program was to identify valves that were leaking internally due to failed seals which made their condition unknown.  An infrared thermal gun was used to take temperature readings upstream and downstream of the valves in question.  Once the procedure was written and the valves of potential energy loss were logged and identified, I made trips to each of the plants to perform the first procedure and get the program off and running.  Since this program has the potential to reduce each of the plant's heat rates by 1% to 2%,  gains from fuel savings in the millions of dollars could easily be realized.