Lecture No. 3: NSTAR
NSTAR, the largest Massachusetts-based electric and gas utility company gave a presentation today focusing on their environmental engineering activities. Presenter representing NSTAR included; Principal Engineer Daniel Watton, Senior Engineer Eric LaMontagne, Engineer Kristen Trudell, Co-op Engineer Andy Crawford, and Co-op Engineer Raj Punjabi.
NSTAR has well over 3,000 employees and serves over 100 communities with 1.1 million electric and 300,000 natural gas customers. The main focus areas for their environmental engineering are environmental sustainability, maintenance and construction environmental compliance, facility environmental compliance, and oil and hazardous material (OHM) release management.
For environmental sustainability, NSTAR recycles materials such as utility pole wood, dielectric fluid, waste motor oil, batteries, copper, aluminum, lead, steel, etc. They look to use renewable products such as vegetable oil which is non-toxic, bio-degradable, non-petroleum based because it comes from a vegetable source. Reducing their Carbon footprint is also very important to NSTAR. The company tries to achieve this by reducing the use of energy and water, efficient fleet fuel use, and reducing the loss of SF6 gas, which has a great global warming potential.
NSTAR also talked about the engineering challenges faced with a specific example of the 2,000 gallon leak found at station 49 in Kenmore Square.