B. J. Jones the Story of My Life Book 3
Copyright© 2021 by jballs
Chapter 64
My mates and the kids met me at the dock, I was glad to see them. It was hugs and kisses before we walked inside. JJ brought me a cold bear, RJ asked if we could walk on the beach for a while?
There were still a couple hours of daylight left. I changed into a bikini and my family and I walked the beach. It gave me a private time to talk to my mates and spend time with them. With us on the beach I could keep the Secret Service and the JBG security well off in the distance.
I listened while Marcy explained the last two acquisitions that took place while I was gone to Washington. One of them was a major almost nationwide electric utility and the other one an owner of electrical transmission lines and power plants that fed the grid for most of the eastern half of the US.
Dozens of Utilities were members of the last one in order to have a connection to the grid reserves and be able to sell excess from their own power plants or to buy power when they needed it.
The purchases fell in line with the revenue diversity that Marcy wanted. She was worried that the security department contracts were soon going to take a hit. She wanted to lessen the effects when it happened by allowing our security employees other places to work if downsizing became a necessity.
Another thing it did was fall in line with the energy portion of the business we now owned. Marcy was trying to grow that portion, the oil wells in Nebraska, Nigeria and Cameroon. The refineries in Nigeria and Cameroon, to supply fuel for the truck stops, fuel for Morton field and supply fuel for power plants.
The grid company raised questions in my mind. In Marcy’s description and previous conversations, they owned close to fifty power plants coal, oil fired, gas fired and several nuclear.
Two of the coal fired plants were called mine mouth plants. Meaning the power plant was located one case at the coal discharge from the massive underground mine. That one was in West Virginia. The other one was in Pennsylvania.
There were no freight charges to get the coal to the power plant. A belt system carried it right to the collier where rock and other undesirables was removed from the coal. Large chunks of coal went through a breaker to reduce the size.
From there it could be split into two directions. One direction sent it into the drum where it was pulverized into dust. The dust was blown directly into the massive furnace where it was burned instantly at very high temperatures.
The air leaving the boiler was cooled down with water removing the ash from the exhaust going up the stack making it a slurry that was piped into a large pit with the excess being pumped into a depleted mine. Dried ash from the pit was sold to concrete companies as a binding agent or was used as a filler for road bed construction along with other uses.
The coal that didn’t need go directionally into the pulverizer was stock piled for use when it was necessary to close the mine for maintenance. The mine was shut down on average a month a year.
There was another massive surface coal mine in Arizona that fed directly into a group of power plants to feed the south west grid. The two grids were connected in two places with very high voltage lines and assisted each other whenever possible.
Those massive mining trucks filled by massive cranes and loaders carried the coal on dedicated roads to the power plants.
There was also a rail siding to load rail cars that carried coal from there to the other power plants or to the marine terminals in the gulf for export.
Marcy explained that JBG had bought the rest of the farm that bordered our Pig Iron fuel depot and was in the process of permitting to build large LPG storage tanks on the site.
The problem she was trying to correct was that LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas) was a by- product of the refining process. The refineries in Cameroon and Nigeria were producing plenty and there was no market for it there.
There was plenty of market here and Marcy was planning to use it to make up for the loss of the regional coal fired power plant. The environmentalist had finally got it closed down the only coal fired power plant.
Now in extreme hot weather or extreme cold weather the power companies were pleading for customers to do all the normal things to reduce demand. For the last two years rolling blackouts were happening in some areas.
When Marcy had locked down that the take overs were a given thing the expert group that she used was directed to long range planning for the utility. It was an independent look at everything without all the stockholder pressure, political pressure and the pressure from the public service commission. Their complete system analysis would be finished in two weeks.
With joint meetings it was decided that a stand by plant on the river was going 24/7. It was originally a coal plant that had been converted to oil during the hay day of the environmental insanity. Everything was terribly out dated the reason it was designated as standby duty.
The boilers were going to be replaced updated and converted for LPG as soon as the tanks were finished and filled at Pig Iron point. For now, they would all go on line and oil fired.
But that was the problem, oil was being brought up the river in barges that that were loaded less than twenty percent of their capacity. The river had filled in with sediment over time and were in a serious need of dredging in places.
The bay environmentalist with every means they could muster, fought every place the core of engineers wanted to place the dredge spoils, the sediment that would be carried into the bay during the dredging process. Finally, the disturbance of the river fish and crab habitat. They wanted the power plant closed any way they could.