cover.qxp wood bioenergy magazine 4/15/15 10:26 am page 1 · the plant uses a single zurin boiler,...

cover.qxp_Wood Bioenergy Magazine 4/15/15 10:26 AM

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ReEnergy Ashland

Restarts With Boom

26 Wood Bioenergy / April 2015

The ReEnergy Ashland restart management team,from left, Mark Bossie, John Sawyer, Mark Thibodeau and Paul Brabant

By Jessica Johnson

ReEnergy_Ashland_WB0415.qxp_Wood Bioenergy Magazine 4/15/15 10:38 AM 6

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ASHLAND, Me.

ReEnergy Holdings, based in Latham, NY, acquiredthe idled Ashland, Me. biomass power plant inDecember 2011 as part of a multi-power-plant

purchase from Boralex, and began working on a plan torestart the facility. Since northern Maine is on its ownoperating system, and is not tied to the rest of NewEngland, but instead is tied to New Brunswick, Can.,market conditions were challenging for a restart. Thegrid reliability over the years, thanks to different marketfactors, became very unstable, so the ReEnergy facilityin nearby Fort Fairfield, Me. was running on high criti-cal status quite often and was often told not to come offline or drop any megawatts. Something supplementalwas needed.

The Ashland restart became possible due to a numberof factors, including energy market changes, availabil-ity of transmission capacity and a growing need for alocal outlet for mill and forest residues. The restart proj-ect began in late July 2014, under wraps, and the facil-ity was brought to commercial operation on October 22,2014. The four key players on the Ashland restart andmanagement team will say that even though a lot ofblood, sweat and tears were poured into the facility dur-ing that time, the end result was worth it.

“Collectively, with the group we had here, we did ahelluva job. We spent a lot of nights here and a lot ofweekends here. Most of our wives were asking us if wehad girlfriends up in Aroostook County, because weweren’t coming home,” John Sawyer, ReEnergy SeniorEngineer and restart Project Manager says with a biglaugh. During WoodBioenergy’s visit to the facility, theexcitement and energy amongst the restart and manage-ment team was palpable.

Coming On-LineDuring the restart, the four-man team split time be-

tween Fort Fairfield and Ashland. Sawyer is based inMaine, but travels between the facilities; Paul Brabant

was the maintenance manager at Fort Fairfield, moon-lighted at Ashland during the restart, and is now locatedfull time in Ashland as the Maintenance Manager. MarkThibodeau is ReEnergy’s Regional Manager for theFort Fairfield, Ashland and Stratton plants. He serves asReEnergy Ashland’s Facility Manager. Mark Bossie,like Brabant, worked full time at Fort Fairfield, whilemoonlighting at Ashland during the restart. Now, he islocated full time in Ashland as Operations Manager.

Before any work could be done on the existing facil-ity, the team had to reenergize the existing substation,which took a lot of work behind the scenes, a lot ofelectrical testing in order to get conveyors running.Sawyer says the first big project was to restore thebackfeed from the substation back to the facility.

A lot of TBDs popped up on the ever-growing list ofprojects to complete. After a while Sawyer just startedwriting TBM, To Be Mark, or TBJ, To Be John. “Wedrew a lot from our internal resources. Stratton’s I&Ctech and mechanics came up to help with certain things,as well as Fort Fairfield and Livermore Falls. By doing itourselves, a lot of people gained a lot more experience,and the quality of work was a lot better,” he believes.

Sawyer says on the original schedule in MicrosoftProject there were 400 to 500 rows of things to “checkon” or “find out about” or “consider.” After he addedhis items, he sent it around to the team, who put theirthoughts in it. It was hard work, he says, but it was defi-nitely fun.

The best part in his mind? There was only one phoneline and limited internet. “We didn’t get inundated withthings that weren’t valuable to the start up. We couldkinda do our own thing.

“We all agreed on a schedule. We had probably 40things under the wood yard. Then we split it up. I had asection, Paul had a section, Scott (another engineer) hada section and we all became project managers in thoseareas. So if it didn’t work you were going to have to an-swer some questions,” Sawyer explains.

It was a fast restart for the company, much faster

April 2015 / Wood Bioenergy 27

During the restart celebration, Gov. LePage deemed ReEnergyAshland officially open for business. (Erin M. Dunn photo)

The facility takes between 45-60 truckloads of fuel per day.

ReEnergy_Ashland_WB0415.qxp_Wood Bioenergy Magazine 4/15/15 10:38 AM Page 27

than corporate anticipated. Ac-cording to Sawyer, December 1was the projected date for produc-ing reliable power. ReEnergyAshland was producing reliablepower on October 22.

“I think our corporate peoplewere a little surprised about whatwe did within the time we did itin,” Sawyer says. “Once this reallystarted rolling and got the momen-tum up, people were saying, ‘Holymoly we gotta make sure we get thewood in there because John andMark are going to be ready to lightthis thing,’” he adds laughing.

Within coming on-line, in a 24-hour span, the plant was at 36 MW.Full capacity is a gross output of 39MW, which is capable of producingapproximately 284,000 MWh ofelectricity each year—enough tosupply nearly 37,000 homes.

Thibodeau believes that thework done in Ashland could act asa guide for future ReEnergy start-ups or restarts. “We made somemistakes and we were wrongsometimes, but we had a lot of les-sons learned and overall it was ahuge success. It’s a building blockfor the company. We did it with100% internal resources from thecompany—we did the startupwithout hiring one single outsideconsultant,” he says with pride.

For ReEnergy as a company,safety is the top priority. Bossie re-counts that during the restart therewere no recordable injuries.

Operations Put simply, the plant uses heat

generated by the combustion of bio-mass material to create steam,which drives a GE turbine to gener-ate electricity. The power is sentalong a transmission cable systemfor sale into the region’s power grid.

Avery Weigh-Tronix scales and aFairbanks indicator are used torecord biomass deliveries. Trucksare unloaded using one of twoPhelps Industries truck dumpers.From the dumpers, material is con-veyed using ProcessBarron convey-ors to a fuel out pile, tended by

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Caterpillar D8 and D7 bulldozers,both with a chip blade, and a Cater-pillar 950 wheel loader. CBI sup-plied the wood hog in the fuel yard.

The plant uses a single Zurinboiler, which produces steam at arate of 334,000 lbs. per hour, 875PSI and an average temperature of

900° F for a GE steam turbine andgenerator.

A Foxboro DCS system allows asingle operator to monitor all theequipment in the facility, as wellas monitor electrical output andboiler operations.

On average, this plant will take

in 450,000 tons of raw material peryear, which shakes out to between45-60 truckloads a day. Since theburn rate is higher in winter, theaverage fluctuates: 1500 tons perday during those months, andabout 1100 tons a day in the sum-mer. Bossie says that translates tobasically one to one-and-a halftruckloads per hour.

Eric Dumond is responsible forfuel procurement for all of ReEn-ergy’s facilities in Maine. The typ-ical radius for fuel procurement isabout 50-75 miles. However, Thi-bodeau says usually they don’thave to go that far; Ashland is agreat area for wood supply, it’s theheart of the northern Mainewoods. Additionally, the facilityburns a lot of the residuals fromlocal sawmills.

“Spec? Bring it, we burn it,”Brabant says cheekily. The fuelspec is broad, but for chips it is athree-inch minus. Bossie echoesBrabant by saying unless there is amajor issue with a fuel load, theydo not turn it away.

With such a diverse fuel supply,processing and housekeeping pres-ent challenges with residuals, be-cause dust is relatively weightlessand just takes off inside the boilercompared to chips, which aredenser, but “We’re adapting to it,”Bossie says.

In November 2014, ReEnergyAshland received SFI certification.It was an extremely detailed in-tense process, and Thibodeau ispleased with the extra work every-one put in to make it happen, espe-cially from Dumond and his team.

Weather ConcernsTo point out the obvious, north-

ern Maine receives some extremeweather. At the time of WoodBio’svisit, the high was -9° F and therewas nearly four feet of snow onthe ground in certain places—thatpresents a unique challenge for thepower plant.

Thibodeau explains, “The snowpresents problems not necessarilyon transmission of power but on

30 Wood Bioenergy / April 2015


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processes we have at the plant with burning of woodchips. We get a lot of frozen, wet wood that is encasedin ice. Trying to burn snow and ice requires moreBTUs.”

Maine also experiences “mud seasons.” In an effort tocombat the slowdown during them, the fuel yard tries tostockpile. The worst one is in the spring after the snowmelts, because there are no forest operation as loggerscan’t get into the forest without rutting up the ground.Thibodeau says they try to come into a mud season withas much inventory as they can.

However, it’s a tough balancing act because aftermore than 90 days the wood is at risk of natural com-bustion. Bossie adds, “There is a point were the woodstarts burning in the piles. It’s a balance between stock-piling enough and not wasting.”

Sawyer agrees, but notes the importance of the grid re-liability. “This grid is a winter peaking grid; in this partof the state, there is no need for supplemental power, ex-cept in the winter.” Sawyer estimates the county uses be-tween 70-80 MW, and the ReEnergy facilities in the areaare lugging a large amount of that. Fort Fairfield puts out37 MW and Ashland puts out 39 MW.

Employee Relations When it came time to hire operators, ReEnergy re-

ceived more than 200 applications and interviewed morethan 100 to fill the 22 open positions. Thibodeau, Bossie,Brabant and HR Manager Lori Russell spent day afterday, almost back to back in the conference room, inter-viewing people. Thibodeau says while Sawyer was outtrying to get the plant together, people would be comingin for interviews and often he or Bossie or Brabant wouldbe running out to get something done in the plant.“Staffing was quite a feat in itself,” he says, “It waspainstaking but it was a critical part.”

Once the interview process was complete and appli-cants were selected, they were given a packet of infor-mation, a guide to the plant. After reading it, and

spending time inside the facility, they were expected tobe able to draw systems and figure out how the systemsworked in order to not only operate systems properly,but also troubleshoot issues.

Sawyer says one of the key things they kept drillinginto the employees was, “This startup is going to hap-pen. We don’t want to be in a position where, as a man-ager, I say, ‘go start the condensate pump,’ and youlook at me and say, ‘where’s the condensate pump?’They were expected to be 85% plus competent on thestuff in that book.”

Many items in the book had to be checked by a mem-ber of the management team, which Sawyer says helpedget the employees up to speed quickly. Employees werehired in August and September and by late Septemberand October, the facility was making steam.

“It was a really steep learning curve. 95% of the crewwas new to the plant and they had a matter of weeks tobe ready,” Thibodeau says. “They had other experi-ences; they were well qualified from other places, butwhen you have to learn a new plant, a plant this size,there’s a lot of systems in place to understand.” Thetraining packet was a good guide, and employees weresent to the Livermore Falls, Me. facility. Employeesspent about a week training on an operating plant,which certainly helped.

ReEnergy Ashland employs 25 full time, a mix ofboiler operators, plant operators, mechanics, electri-cians, fuel yard operators and supervisors. In the stateof Maine, boiler operators have to be licensed, as theyare high-pressure boiler operators. Thibodeau believesit is a good program—adding that it requires his guys tobe higher trained.

The facility has four shifts, each with a shift supervi-sor, boiler operator, fuel yard operator and control roomoperator. A four-man maintenance crew includes twomechanics, an electrician and an electrical and instru-ment technician. Two fuel quality techs assist with de-livery of wood, and one administrative assistant is incharge of accounts payable, receivable, payroll and

April 2015 / Wood Bioenergy 31

Before the restart could happen, the existing substation had to bereenergized, in order to get the conveyors running.

A Foxboro DCS system allows close monitoring of goings on.


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keeping the office together. Sawyer points out that the em-

ployees at the facility don’t justhave one job. Just like the manage-ment team, they wear many hats.“The thing about the operators is,even though they are shift work-ers, when the plant goes down theyconvert to maintenance,” he ex-plains. The plant has two sched-uled outages during the year, onein the spring to get ready for thesummer peak and one in the fall toget ready for the winter peak.

He continues, “Whatever it takesto get us to where we are running 90plus percent capacity, these guyshave to help make it happen—theyaren’t just boiler operators.”

Thibodeau agrees, grateful forthe teamwork in place. “Biomassplants are inherently driven by ef-ficiency—we have to be. You haveto be really streamlined. It’s a bigteam effort and it’s in extreme con-ditions. We’ve had wind chillwarnings of -50 and -60 degreesthis year and guys have had toclimb the stack in those condi-tions. You have to have dedicatedpeople for that.”

Local, State ImpactBefore the restart, Ashland as a

town was floundering. But thanksto a few key factors, like theopening of a J.D. Irving, Ltd.sawmill and the restart of thepower plant, the town has becomemore vibrant.

Brabant, a resident of the area,

says the local impact of the planthas been incredible, “Any of thestores you go to, people are happythere’s activity again. For thelongest time the Ashland area waslike a ghost town.”

During the restart, Sawyer saysboth he and Thibodeau made aconcerted effort to hire local con-tractors, “Whenever we could useanybody local, we did. We tried tosupport as much as we can lo-cally—try to be a good neighbor.”

It wasn’t just the local commu-nity that took note of the restartproject, Maine’s capital city wasalso aware. So when the timecame to start commercial opera-tions, ReEnergy had a RestartCelebration.

On October 2, economic devel-opment officials, state and localdignitaries, ReEnergy corporateofficers, the state Chamber ofCommerce president, SenatorAngus King and Governor PaulLePage came to ReEnergy Ash-land and toured the grounds. Sen.King spoke, as well as Gov. LeP-age, with Thibodeau acting as theMaster of Ceremonies.

At the end of the event, when itwas time to officially open ReEn-ergy Ashland for business, Gov.LePage flipped a switch, built byBrabant, an air horn went off, anda truck dumped a load of fuel.ReEnergy’s corporate communi-cations director Sarah Boggesssays the day couldn’t have beenbetter, “There was a lot to cele-brate in Ashland that day.”

Northern Maine is known for extreme weather, presenting some issues withchips combusting in piles, if left longer than 90 days.


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