Largest North American Electric Utility Company Chooses Vertex
VERTEX has been selected for Green House Gas (GHG) Consulting and environmental services by the largest electric utility in North America, Comisión Federal del Electricidad (CFE), the Mexican government-held power utility. CFE has over 160 electricity generation plants with a total capacity of 50,000 MW.
VERTEX has been conducting meetings with senior and regional system managers in Generation, Transmission and Distribution addressing the system wide management of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) a GHG that is 23,000 times more potent then CO2 and environmental management systems for PCBs, contaminated site assessment and remediation and resource management of wastes being generated by CFE facilities.
VERTEX will provide to CFE an environmental management plan for SF6, that will include training programs to manage the handling, sampling, testing and change out of older SF6 containing equipment. The plan and training will include leak detection and mitigation procedures, remote IR camera detection systems and a system wide reporting and tracking program focused on minimizing SF6 releases.
In response to Mexican regulations NOM-133-ECOL-2000/2001, requiring the elimination of PCB contaminated equipment before the end of 2008, VERTEX is providing CFE with a comprehensive program to finalize compliance with NOM-133. CFE has been working aggressively to comply with these regulations and has made substantial progress. VERTEX will assist a management approach to facilitate compliance throughout the generation, transmission and distribution. CFE has over 500 substations throughout Mexico.
CFE is addressing the prevention and assessment of releases of oil and hazardous materials to the environment. VERTEX will develop protocols and procedures for CFE to assess contaminant release liabilities and means to recover for reuse contaminated lands. Vertex will provide programs to CFE with state-of-the-art site assessment methods along with the most effective remediation technologies.
In conjunction with CFE’s site remediation and recovery program VERTEX will examine the opportunities of recycling, reuse or recovery of hazardous and non-hazardous waste generated at power plants. The program will expand from CFE’s current practice of selling bottom ash from the heavy oil (combustoleo) fired plants to metals recovery facilities.
