Power Producers Warm to a Cool Idea

Conservation and power-plant construction may be obvious ways of dealing with California’s power crunch. But a Monrovia company is touting a less transparent remedy: fog.

Using the same technology that has clouded theme parks and disco floors, Mee Industries Inc. is using its man-made fog to help power-plant turbines run more efficiently in hot weather. The cooling vapor is like Geritol for flagging generators, enabling Glendale Water & Power, among other facilities, to boost the electrical output of its aging combustion turbines by as much as 20%, according to utility plant superintendent Larry Moorehouse.

“We can generate more power on a hot day than we could before,” Moorehouse said. “Given recent prices . . . every megawatt counts.”

Some of the biggest names in electricity have purchased Mee Industries fogging systems, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, Duke Energy and Florida Power & Light. It’s a sign of the times in an industry looking to squeeze every last kilowatt out of existing plants while supplies remain tight and electricity prices soar. It also marks the rebirth of Mee Industries, a family-owned company once mired in bankruptcy proceedings that has bounced back to become the biggest name in power-plant fog.

“We created this market,” said Thomas Mee III, chief executive of Mee Industries. “Fogging is [a] cheap, clean, easy and fast” way to generate more power.

At first blush, a company peddling fog as a way to create more kilowatts might seem suspect. But fogging systems are based on some fairly basic science: Cool air is denser than hot air.

That small fact is a big deal to power producers that use combustion turbines to generate electricity. Also known as gas turbines, these machines burn compressed air and natural gas or some other fuel in a combustion chamber to produce super-heated gas to power the blades of a turbine.

The output of a combustion turbine depends on the mass flow of air moving through it. So on sweltering days, when the ambient air is less dense, the amount of electricity produced can drop precipitously, according to Midwest energy consultant Dharam Punwani.

The result is that combustion turbine operators have less energy to sell in the dog days of summer just as demand soars. “In a hot environment, your output can easily go down by as much as 35%,” said Punwani, head of Naperville, Ill.-based Avalon Consulting Inc. “It’s a significant problem,” particularly in parts of the Southwest.

Performance can be improved by chilling the intake air flowing into combustion turbines, using evaporating water, fog or refrigeration. Some of this technology has been around for decades. But Punwani says it took industry deregulation, soaring natural gas prices and rising demand for electricity over the last few years to motivate generators to begin installing so-called “inlet cooling” systems to wring more production out of their turbines.

That has been a boon to a host of small companies selling such technology. Among them is privately held Mee Industries, which has seen its sales nearly quintuple over the last five years to $25 million in 2000. Company officials say its technology improves the output of combustion turbines by 10% to 20%. They estimate the fogging systems have added 1,800 megawatts to the nation’s electricity supply, enough to power about 1.4 million homes.

Conceptually, the Mee Industries system is pretty simple. Demineralized water is pumped under high pressure through hundreds of 1-inch stainless-steel nozzles, strung in a web across the air duct feeding a turbine’s compressor. Tiny openings in each nozzle shoot an ultra-fine jet of water against a metal pin, creating a shower of droplets much like the spray you get by putting your thumb over the flow from a garden hose.

The difference is in the droplet size. Each nozzle creates billions of drops so tiny--less than one-tenth the width of a human hair--that they evaporate almost instantly, cooling the intake air by as much as 30 degrees without drenching it.

That’s important to power-plant operators, a notoriously conservative bunch who don’t want to take a chance on fouling the guts of their multimillion-dollar machines.

Gas turbines “are prima donnas that are extremely sensitive to variations in temperature and humidity,” said Steve Ingistov, principal engineer for Watson Cogeneration Co. in Carson, which has installed Mee Industries foggers on four of its turbines. “The Mee system doesn’t use much water . . . yet it’s extremely effective. That’s what’s so great about it.”

Power-plant operators also like the price. Costing from $50,000 to $200,000 depending on the size of the turbine, Mee Industries fogging systems deliver extra power for $10 to $20 a kilowatt, according to company officials. That compares with $400 to $800 a kilowatt to build a new power plant.

But there are drawbacks. Unlike electric chillers, which can boost output year-round in just about any climate, fogging is less effective in humid conditions and cool weather.

Founded in an Altadena garage in 1969 by the late physicist Thomas Mee Jr., the company got its start making meteorological instruments. But a contract to create an artificial cloud for an exhibit at Expo ’70 in Japan showed Mee the potential for man-made fog.

He first spotted a niche in agriculture, developing fogging systems to protect citrus orchards from freezing and to prevent chickens and cattle from perishing in the heat. Then came entertainment and special effects. The company’s fog keeps the summer hordes at Magic Mountain cool while they’re waiting in line and provides the eerie backdrop for the swashbucklers at Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.

Unfortunately, Mee turned out to be a better inventor than a businessman. He took the company public in 1971 when it was barely out of the garage, then hooked up with some venture capitalists in the 1980s hoping to raise enough to fully exploit his fogging technology. Much of the hoped-for investment never materialized, however, and the company was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1987 after Internal Revenue Service agents seized its assets for back taxes.

“I remember sitting out on the curb and thinking: ‘What are we going to do?’ ” said Thomas Mee III, Mee’s oldest son, now 42.

The answer was for the younger generation to work itself out of Chapter 11, take the company private and move it in a new direction. Mee Industries first latched onto the idea of using fog to cool power-plant turbines back in the early ‘90s. But the big break didn’t come until 1997, when the Tennessee Valley Authority purchased the company’s foggers for its entire fleet of 48 combustion turbines.

“It put us on the map,” said D’Arcy Murray, 41, president and half-owner of the company she runs with her brother. “TVA is large and well-respected, so other power producers were willing to give it a try.”

Though Mee Industries has installed more than 6,000 fogging systems worldwide for everything from climate control to special effects, turbine fogging makes up the lion’s share of its business. To date, the firm has retrofitted about 400 combustion turbines, which company officials say represent about 70% of all power-plant fogging systems in use.

With only a fraction of the world’s estimated 9,100 combustion turbines using any kind of inlet cooling, the market potential looks promising, particularly in a time of tight electricity supplies. Mee Industries now employs 100 workers and has opened an additional facility in South Carolina.

But industry watchers say the company’s early lead in fogging technology could evaporate. A number of competitors have come out with their own versions, and some large turbine manufacturers may be looking to develop their own inlet cooling technology.

“Mee does an excellent job, but this isn’t brain surgery,” said gas turbine expert Maher Elmasri, president of Massachusetts-based Thermoflow Inc. “There are a lot of competitors jumping on the bandwagon now.”

Still, promoters of inlet cooling say that’s a sign the concept is finally catching on in the power industry.

As Tom Pierson, chairman of the Turbine Inlet Cooling Assn., said, “This technology has a role to play” in helping meet the nation’s energy needs.