flexible metal hose

It’s no news that coal-fired generation is going by the way-side.  Despite a recent resurgence in political support, coal is fighting an uphill battle on two major fronts: economically and environmentally.  After the shale gas boom in the 2000’s, plummeting natural gas prices and rising environmental concerns have continued to make operating aging coal-fired plants less and less attractive – for owners and consumers alike. The recent slowdown issues with the pandemic are only exacerbating the conditions – as industrial and commercial sectors are the greatest consumers of electricity.  With only the cleanest and most efficient plants left in operation (in 2010 coal generated 45% of the nation’s electricity, compared to 24% by the end of 2019) and the rest quickly moving towards eventual closure, we are witnessing a tremendous shift take place.  So how is this shift going to resolve and what should we expect?

Long-Term Changes

Fortunately for us in 2020 – the shift away from coal has been happening long enough that new generation capacity has already been under construction and is coming online just in time to replace the retiring coal plants.  The economic downturn effecting industry has showed an acceleration in these trends – but natural gas and renewable outputs have been rising to pick up the slack for over a decade.  In fact, the U.S. has been somewhat lagging behind in terms of progress towards renewables with some European countries already shutting down the last of their coal-fired plants.  Though domestic renewables are indeed growing significantly – having nearly doubled in power production in the past ten years, and are expected to double-over again and overtake natural gas by 2050.

As Albert Einstein once said, “The only source of knowledge is experience.” When it comes to interlocked hose, Hose Master has had a fair share of experience.  While other product lines have been added and developed over the years, Hose Master has been manufacturing and continuously refining interlocked hose since the company opened its doors in 1982.  During that time, they’ve seen hoses both excel in the field, as well as fail from a variety of factors. However, in their decades of experience, the majority of interlocked hose failures can be attributed to one of three failure modes: torque, abrasion, and over-bending.

Torque

Addressing New Issues

Steel mill operators don’t like to have downtime problems, in fact they can’t afford to.  They want to run as much as possible, and as efficiently as possible.  Production equals dollars.  As problems pop up that cause unplanned downtime or upset production (and subsequently get addressed) over the years, they’ve driven the industry to continue to change and evolve as a whole.  So the mills of today don’t have the same issues that mills did in the past.  You can’t as easily say “Hey, we saw this exact same problem up the street on their furnace!” the way you may have been able to 50 years ago.

That doesn’t mean that mills still don’t run into issues, they just tend to be a bit more personalized. And when you have a unique issue, you tend to get a unique solution.  A mill will do its best to solve its own problems, yet each mill has their own idiosyncrasies.  When