Rachael Merica Email & Phone Number

Under the Development organization, I support the company's goals and objectives surrounding the energy transition through technical assessment of identified business opportunities and systematically de-risking projects prior to transitioning them to our construction team. I support our Northeast and Midwest regions, including solar and battery energy storage projects in MISO and PJM. Pre-Construction and Engineering responsibilities include coordination across both internal and external stakeholders as well as management of design phase engineering, site surveying, environmental and local permitting, and capital cost estimating. In this role, my project pipeline has included renewables development on 9 retired or to be retired coal plants across Illinois under the Coal to Solar legislation.

Ontelaunee Power Plant

As the plant engineer at a combined-cycle facility, I have expanded my power generation knowledge as the sole technical contact for the site. I have assisted in the coordination of the plant’s largest outage to date which included a $12 million capital and $3 million maintenance budget. I have also managed over $22 million in capital projects including a combustion turbine uprate that increased generation by 14 MWs. I have continued my passion for continuous improvement, utilizing advanced pattern recognition software to diagnose tube failures in the HRSGs as well as improve predicted steam cycle parameters to increase plant efficiency by approximately 100 Btu/kwh. These operational and performance improvement initiatives have resulted in over $600k in annual recurring savings and gross margin increases. Currently, I am an active member of multiple fleet procedure development teams, known as Centers of Excellence. These teams include Electrical Safe Work Practices, Project-Life Cycle, and Renewable Maintenance Basis, and Asset Management.

Zimmer Power Station

As a maintenance supervisor, I managed a small condition-based maintenance team, ensuring monthly GADS reporting, vibration rounds, pump performance testing, and infrared monitoring were completed on time and accurately. I further developed my leadership skills by supervising multiple contractor crews during planned and forced outages. I was also tasked to oversee the plant wide capital budget, including the project approval, forecasting, and reporting. Lastly, I love technical writing, and was provided the opportunity to assist in writing the state of the station document to assess plant equipment health, driving budget and maintenance activities.

Zimmer Power Station

I began my career as an engineer at the world's largest single unit coal-fired facility, where I managed balance of plant related capital projects including 4,000 scfm air dryer installation, GE Consolidated power relief ball valve replacement, and various high energy pump rebuilds. I also began developing my leadership skills by leading the high energy piping program which involved periodic system monitoring and outage inspection/repair scope development. In addition, I developed long term capital and maintenance budgets for balance of plant related projects, and championed the station’s continuous improvement efforts from project development through implementation and benefit tracking. Lastly, safety is at the core of everything we do. I contributed to the station’s safety council by planning site visits between plants of different industries and implementing best practices from other stations

Ontelaunee Power Plant

During this internship, I fell in love with the energy industry and power generation. Here I utilized my technical skills to develop performance monitoring reports for the HRSGs, steam turbine, condenser, and cooling tower. I completed a research project on the effects of cooling tower flow balance on subcooling, temperature rise, and other parameters and evaluated cooling tower vendor bids for fill, fan, and tower replacement. Lastly, I studied rate of inlet pre-filter degradation to develop an optimized preventative maintenance program.

Middletown Pa

Executive Master In Business Administration, Energy

Bachelor Of Science (Bs), Energy Engineering, 3.84