Canada has a lot of natural gas and limited ways to get rid of it all. This creates excellent opportunities for natural gas electrical power generation. LEC provided a “double wide” E-house that operates at 4160V.
Thule Air Base is solely powered by diesel power generation, running on JP-8 jet fuel. Their generators date back to the 50’s and 60’s, and are highly reliable medium speed machines with many, many runtime hours on them.
Soto Cano is an air force base in Honduras. It is a joint venture between the US and Honduras, primarily working in a drug interdiction role against the illegal drug trade. Soto Cano has been using diesel power generation to power the base for many years. They use high speed diesels, running 24/7/365. When a high-speed diesel runs continuously, a couple things happen:
The country of Honduras is a beautiful, mountainous place with incredible, hospitable people. Honduras is also rich in history, culture and natural resources. Traveling to the city of Copan provides a great opportunity to visit ancient Mayan ruins. Traveling to the Honduran island of Roatan offers an incredible journey to the largest barrier reef in the western hemisphere. Flying into San Pedro Sula, you will see large banana and pineapple farms from the air.
On March, 2016, LEC got involved in a small power project when a missionary named Dale, was in the process of renovating a hospital in Malumghat, Bangladesh called Memorial Christian Hospital. He explained to LEC that they have utility power present to run the hospital, but that it is unreliable to the point of having anywhere form 5-10 outages per day! So, they needed some switchgear and controls that would automatically start, parallel and transfer to generator power when needed. Then, execute closed transition return back to utility when utility is again available.
There are two generator power markets – standby (emergency) power and prime power. Prime power means that the generator is the sole source of electrical power and runs whenever power is needed. For example, at a coal mine, this might be 8 hours a day. Meanwhile, standby power is used only during emergency situations. Many would argue that because this a generator that is rarely used, it doesn’t justify the investment. The savings equate to kW-hr savings.
Biotown Ag, Inc. is a farm that raises beef. Alot of beef! Five thousand head, in fact. Biotown Ag has been innovative in their method of feeding and raising beef, processing beef waste through an anaerobic digester, using the waste gas for power generation, and then using the digester remnant for its fertilizer content and applying it to tillable soil. The harvested grain that benefited from the fertilizer is then fed back to the beef (again). Talk about closing the loop!
In 2011, LEC president Randy Leman went to KAF (the Kandahar Airfield) for one month with fellow engineers Greg and Oscar. Kandahar Air Field is an old Soviet air base that was taken over by the US after Russia’s exit from Afghanistan. It is then utilized as a UN air base with all kinds of countries and nationalities represented there.