About Us - Biography
Green Energy Engineering, Inc., was founded by Mr. Eric Coffin who has:
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with an emphasis on Thermal Processes,
Process Control, and Fluid Flow from the University of South Florida
- Extensive graduate work in Thermal Processes and Process Control
- Registered Professional Engineer in Florida, USA.
- Certified Energy Manager Worldwide
- Approved Professional Engineer Continuing Education provider in Florida, North Carolina,
and many other States.
After college, Eric started his career in January 1979 at Procter & Gamble in
Cincinnati, Ohio in the Thermal Energy Process Control group. This was the period
of the second oil embargo and P&G was aggressive about reducing energy costs
at their manufacturing plants.
Eric developed boiler control and safeguard logic for a host of thermal processes
that included:
- Natural gas fired steam boilers;
- Heavy oil fired drying furnaces;
- Coal fired steam boilers with steam turbine generators;
- Natural gas fired combustion turbine generators;
- Wood waste fired cogeneration plants;
- Sawdust fired steam boilers; and
- Sawdust fired sub-Stoichiometric wood combustors feeding existing natural gas boilers.
Eric also performed hundreds of energy audits and feasibility studies for entire
plants and sub processes to develop cost effective energy reduction projects.
In 1984, Eric returned to St. Petersburg, Florida and went to work for Florida Power
Corporation’s sister company, Electric Fuels, whose operating division was called
COMCO (Coal Oil Mixture Company). COMCO had developed three coal-based alternative
fuels to lower the energy costs of industrial customers. Coal has been and continues
to be a very cheap abundant fuel here in the United States. However, the barriers
to usage are huge because of rail delivery and storage of coal and the expense and
operation of large coal pulverizers. COMCO overcame these limits by processing the
coal to a fine talcum powder consistency at a central facility in south Tampa. This
powder was then:
- Mixed with water to provide a safe carrier;
- Mixed with oil to provide a safe carrier; and
- Blanketed with nitrogen for transport to customer
located storage silos.
Coffin was the project engineer on a coal silo, reclaim, burying system for a central
Florida phosphate company wanting to reduce their fuel costs. He also worked with
the sales and marketing group on selling the COMCO fuels to pulp mills, power generators,
chemical plants, and other phosphate plants.
After that COMCO assignment, Eric transferred to Florida Power Corporation and managed
the Load Management Analysis group. At that time 500,000 customers had a radio switch
installed in their homes to permit the utility to limit the usage of electricity
of their air conditioners, water heaters, pool pumps, and / or electric heating
equipment such as heat strips and heat pumps during peak usage times. It is the
world’s largest load management program and Eric’s group provided control schemes,
test schemes, updated kWh reduction data, projected growth and MW impact, cost effectiveness,
and radio switch coverage area tests.
Because of his grasp of economics and forecasting, the Manager of System Planning
arranged for Eric to transfer to the System Planning group and perform economic
studies of power supply options and power plant improvements. Eric is very familiar
with engineering, construction, and economic studies and put that background to
work evaluating company wide projects that included;
- Fuel prices and fuel forecast
- Power plant equipment upgrade projects
- Addition of other fuels to the portfolio mix
- Rail, truck, barge, and pipeline delivery of fuel to remote peaker sites
- Conversion of boilers to accommodate fluidized bed burning
- Investigation of burning peat in an old coal boiler
- Impact of noise reduction mufflers for engines
- Load shifting economics of hot water storage
- Economics of burning natural gas in an as avaliable contract
- Repowering of steam turbine generators with combustion turbines
As the need for building new generating capacity arose Eric transferred to the newly
created generation design and construction group where he held the title
of Principle Instrumentation, Control, and Electrical Engineer.
