This edition first published 2020
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Bedalov, Zark, author.
Title: Practical power plant engineering : a guide for early career engineers / Zark Bedalov, Vancouver BC, CA.
Description: Hoboken, NJ, USA : Wiley, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019027657 (print) | LCCN 2019027658 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119534945 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119534983 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119534990 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Electric power‐plants.
Classification: LCC TK1191 .B43 2020 (print) | LCC TK1191 (ebook) | DDC 621.31/21–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027657
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027658
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Images: Courtesy of Zark Bedalov; Background © Martin Capek/Shutterstock
Preface – Why This Book?
This book is a result of 50 years of practical experience from working in a number of industries with ever‐changing technologies and by associating with many experienced engineers; electrical and other engineering backgrounds.
Starting as an engineer is not easy. You are facing a big transition. I'm certain this book will help get you through the most critical phase of your development as an electrical engineer and make you the confident and knowledgeable professional that you wanted to be when you decided to be an engineer.
There are a lot of books on the market explaining the theory of electrical engineering, but there are no books on practical engineering and experience. There used to be the old Westinghouse (now ABB) TD (blue) Book and Donald Beeman, General Electric Co. 1955: Industrial Power Systems Handbook, both of which I have proudly used as a young engineer. Both books now seem to be largely outdated. Computers have taken over much of the handmade calculations.
The information contained in this book is by no means all encompassing. An attempt to present the entire subject of practical electrical engineering would be impractical. However, this book does present guidelines to provide the reader with a fundamental knowledge sufficient to understand the concepts and methods of practical design and equipment selection and operations.
The first hint of a book came in Venezuela. After three years on a job with a local engineering company heading the engineering department, I decided to move on. The boss called me with a special request, saying: “Please stay on for another 3 months and write a book on how to do electrical engineering. You seem to do this work with a lot of common sense. I thank you for your help in leading and teaching our younger engineers. So, stay on, please.”
The above dialog happened three years after seeing the movie Papillion (1978) filmed in Venezuela with Steve McQueen. The day after the movie, I fell into a snowy ditch somewhere north of Toronto. I had to leave the car and walk alone in the snow for a couple of hours in a total whiteout. A day later I spoke to my wife, we were going to Venezuela. Both of us loved the tropics and had it enough of Canadian winters.
Einstein: Theory is when everything is known but nothing works.
Experience is when everything works but no one knows why.
When we join theory and experience nothing works and no one knows why.
We quit our jobs, sold everything, and went to Caracas. “How smart was that,” I heard it many times? Once in Caracas, I left my resume with six major engineering companies and then we went to a beach. Two weeks later, we returned to the Hotel Sabana Grande in Caracas. The owner said that I had many calls. I had five job interviews and took a job with a company that had a contract to build a 4 × 400 MW power plant. They badly needed an experienced electrical engineer. At that time, I had about 10 years of experience with a great company called Shawinigan Engineering from Montreal, Canada. That company was later taken over by SNC‐Lavalin, Inc., my last employer.
Three years later, after the plant was built, I told my Venezuelan boss that I enjoyed it greatly, but I gotta be moving on. I moved on to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was 1981. It seemed I was at the right place at the right time. There was so much going on in Saudia. At that time, some large generation existed in the Eastern province for oil production and barely in the cities of Riyadh and Jeddah. We began the electrification of the country in a major way. After Saudia, I went to several other international posts with companies like Fluor and Bechtel. Finally, I ended up with SNC‐Lavalin for the past 17 years as a commissioning engineer. That makes it a total of 50 years as a lead design and commissioning engineer for power plants, heavy industrial plants, and power systems. Of that, 10 years were as an independent engineer on my own.
In
