daugen
Epic Contributor
About twenty years ago, after I sold my Radio Shack and was about to go back into insurance, a friend asked me to help grow his specialty instrumentation business, mostly dealing with Schlumberger electronic
pressure, vibration, etc, sensors in the electrical generation field. I'm not a mechanic at all, my boss was a mechanical engineer so he used his technical ability and I used my people skills and we did well together. We picked up the scraps left by GE and Westinghouse. Which took me to jet engine turbine generators, coal fired steam plants, one nuke plant (hard to get in...) and two hydroelectric dams, in Pennsylvania, one of which had 100 year old giant brass analog instrumentation on it. But it just kept plugging along, though it had scheduled outages like all of them. Just seemed like such an incredibly good idea to use the natural power of water and gravity to make electricity. Just like wind energy, despite the unattractive view. Hydros were always quiet, though made a big hum, and there were always fishermen right below.
The nuke plants were the biggest generators of them all of course, though there are some huge coal fired plants too. The only reason the Delaware River in PA is kept dredged in the upper reaches is to allow the coal barge to come up river to the Trenton NJ coal fired steam plant. Lots of folks boating on that river are glad of that.
a bit different than our maintenance runs...everything in a three ring binder, SOP for almost everything.
We were replacing strip chart recorders and networking them outside of the plant's main system for areas deemed unworthy of hooking up or crazy expensive from the main supplier. When the power plant had a little money left over in the budget at the end of the year, we got called for
some smaller jobs and it was a fascinating job for me being surrounded by so much huge machinery, most of which I had very limited idea how it worked. Enthalpy, Entropy, lot to learn...
and now here I am test running my own tiny generators...wish there was a less expensive load bank out there, though rounding up two space heaters isn't usually a problem. With my background in electronic monitoring, it frankly bothers me having engines without adequate gauges.
Even my expensive Kubota only has stupid idiot lights. And we sure don't usually get amperage use, output voltage, oil pressure and oil temp gauges on our generators...much less a pyrometer stuck in the air cooled heads.
pressure, vibration, etc, sensors in the electrical generation field. I'm not a mechanic at all, my boss was a mechanical engineer so he used his technical ability and I used my people skills and we did well together. We picked up the scraps left by GE and Westinghouse. Which took me to jet engine turbine generators, coal fired steam plants, one nuke plant (hard to get in...) and two hydroelectric dams, in Pennsylvania, one of which had 100 year old giant brass analog instrumentation on it. But it just kept plugging along, though it had scheduled outages like all of them. Just seemed like such an incredibly good idea to use the natural power of water and gravity to make electricity. Just like wind energy, despite the unattractive view. Hydros were always quiet, though made a big hum, and there were always fishermen right below.
The nuke plants were the biggest generators of them all of course, though there are some huge coal fired plants too. The only reason the Delaware River in PA is kept dredged in the upper reaches is to allow the coal barge to come up river to the Trenton NJ coal fired steam plant. Lots of folks boating on that river are glad of that.
a bit different than our maintenance runs...everything in a three ring binder, SOP for almost everything.
We were replacing strip chart recorders and networking them outside of the plant's main system for areas deemed unworthy of hooking up or crazy expensive from the main supplier. When the power plant had a little money left over in the budget at the end of the year, we got called for
some smaller jobs and it was a fascinating job for me being surrounded by so much huge machinery, most of which I had very limited idea how it worked. Enthalpy, Entropy, lot to learn...
and now here I am test running my own tiny generators...wish there was a less expensive load bank out there, though rounding up two space heaters isn't usually a problem. With my background in electronic monitoring, it frankly bothers me having engines without adequate gauges.
Even my expensive Kubota only has stupid idiot lights. And we sure don't usually get amperage use, output voltage, oil pressure and oil temp gauges on our generators...much less a pyrometer stuck in the air cooled heads.
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