Richard “Dick” Engel has two passions: driving muscle cars and rebuilding power plants.
As founder, owner and chief executive of Costa Mesa engineering firm Powerplant Maintenance Specialists Inc., Engel doesn’t have much time to drive his 1970 Plymouth Hemicuda or his 1996 Buick GS convertible these days. He’s at ground zero of California’s power crunch.
Engel’s firm is retooling two units at AES Corp.’s Huntington Beach Generating Station, which as of late last week were in a regulatory holding pattern. PMSI has been working on the station’s units 3 and 4 since September under a $130 million AES contract.
The Huntington Beach plant expansion is a case study in California’s power dilemma. Rosemead-based Southern California Edison built the plant in 1959 and shut it down in 1995 after it failed to meet air quality requirements. Under deregu-lation, Edison later sold the plants to Arlington, Va.-based AES, now California’s largest private power generator.
But the bid to restart the plant’s idle units has run into local opposition and regulatory hurdles. The state Energy Commission is expected to vote on a fast-track permit for the units on Wednesday but wants AES to keep the power in California.
AES Huntington Beach has been running units 1 and 2 since earlier this year. At full capacity, the AES plant could power 1 million homes, or twice as many as it does now. That could provide much needed relief this summer when officials predict a month’s worth of rolling blackouts.
Company officials expect the project to be completed by mid-summer, depending on the Energy Commission ruling.
The ambitious project includes: demolishing and reconstructing steam boilers and condensers; rebuilding two turbine generators; installing a pollution control system; replacing and repairing pipes; rebuilding the auxiliary system that supports generation operations; and installing new digital emission-control systems. PMSI also plans to repair the 45,000 gallon-per-minute pumps that bring ocean water into the plant for cooling.
A visit to the site off Pacific Coast Highway offers a scene of industrial dynamism not usually associated with upscale coastal Orange County. Against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, the generating stations are a 10-story beehive of activity, filling the air with the sounds of drills and hammers, the hiss and sparks of welding, warning beeps of vehicles and clanging of steel.
Tons of rusted metal bars sit stacked, either for melting down or retooling. Massive new boiler walls and other pieces are stored, ready for assembly.
A couple of hundred workers,a force set to increase to about 600 if and when the expansion is in full swing,are cleaning out the plant’s carcasses and machining salvageable parts.
The workers are a veritable international all-star team of tradesmen, half of them in California temporarily to get power plants up and running. Tough, weathered men (and a few women), answer questions cooperatively and with thick accents: Polish-born machinists from Chicago, welders from Texas and high-wire Lousiana “riggers.”
AES had planned to scrap the Huntington Beach plant and replace it with a smaller, more modern facility. But for now, the energy crunch has given the plant a new lease on life.
The Huntington Beach project is a boon for Engel, an OC philanthropist, who sees it as the culmination of years of work since he founded PMSI two decades ago.
“In revenue, we have gone from $25 million a year to $180 million per year in less than a year,” Engel said. “We expect that to increase further. Most of our clout comes from having won this contract.”
For most of its 20-year history, PMSI has operated under everyone’s radar doing decidedly unglamorous work refurbishing and refitting old power plants. Engel formed PMSI in 1981 after leaving San Francisco engineering behemoth Bechtel Group Inc. The Newport Beach resident said he was astounded at the number of fossil-fueled power plant maintenance projects Bechtel was turning down,projects that ended up in the laps of maintenance contractors.
Power plant maintenance is competitive, especially with California’s power crunch. For the AES project, Engel said PMSI had to contend with competing bids from boiler manufacturers like Barberton, Ohio-based Babcock and Wilcox Co. and Darlington, Penn.-based McKay & Gould Drilling Inc.
Among engineering firms, Engel said PMSI also competes with powerhouses Bechtel and Aliso Viejo-based Fluor Corp.
PMSI employs about 27 people in OC with plans to grow to 50 within a year. Most of the workers on the Huntington Beach project are contractors.
While the Huntington Beach plant’s ability to crank out power for summer depends on fast-track approval from the Energy Commission, Engel said PMSI’s payment by AES is guaranteed regardless of what regulators decide.
PMSI is looking to get more power plant work. It is bidding on big coal plant projects in Georgia and Arizona. Those facilities have generating capacities of 1,600 megawatts each. The firm also is vying for work on the two 200-megawatt natural gas Etiwanda plants in San Bernardino County.
The Huntington Beach project has drawn the ire of environmentalists who fear the state will sacrifice air and water quality for quick power. Some Surf City residents also counter the expansion as part of long-running opposition to the AES facility,a sprawling complex that dominates the city’s shoreline.
But Engel said there’s also support for the project. He said he’s received letters of backing from the chambers of commerce in Huntington Beach, Newport Harbor and Costa Mesa, as well as from the Orange County Business Council. State Assemblyman Lou Correa, an Anaheim Democrat, also has expressed support. PMSI also has received encouragement from Newport Beach chip maker Conexant Systems Inc. and The Boeing Co.’s Seal Beach-based Space Communications Group. n
