NEWS & TECHNOLOGY FOR THE GLOBAL ENERGY INDUSTRY SINCE 1882

Vol. 167 • No. 3 • March 2023

The Future
of Combined
Heat & Power Page 18

Focus on Energy Storage | 22

Understanding Securitization | 32
Gas Turbine O&M | 34 & 36
 SOLUTIONS YOU
CAN COUNT ON
TIME & AGAIN!

Pop-A-Plug® Tube Plugs

ASME PCC-2 Compliant Heat Exchanger Tube Plugging Solution
Trusted by conventional & nuclear power plants around the world as their preferred tube plugging solution, Pop-A-Plug Tube Plugs
from Curtiss-Wright are engineered for optimal performance throughout the life cycle of heat exchanger equipment. Simple hydraulic
installation eliminates welding and time-consuming heat treatments that can cause damage to tubes, tube sheet ligaments, and joints.

• No Welding Required
• Pressure Ratings Up to 7000 PsiG (483 BarG)
• Simple Hydraulic Installation
• Helium Leak Tight Seal to 1 x 10-10 cc/sec
• 100% Lot Tested to Ensure Unmatched Quality
• Wide Range of Sizes & ASME/ASTM Certified Materials Available

877.995.7627 l est-sales@curtisswright.com l cw-estgroup.com/pm-23

 ON THE COVER
Efforts to adapt to decarbonization
have prompted combined heat and
power (CHP) equipment manufactur-
ers to develop small-scale hydrogen
CHP systems. The cover photo shows
Established 1882 • Vol. 167 • No. 3 March 2023 a 115-kWe/129-kWth hydrogen CHP en-
gine developed by 2G Energy Inc. The
system has been installed at several lo-
cations in Europe. Its first installation in
SPEAKING OF POWER North America is expected later this year.
Deployment of Carbon Capture Technology Likely to Courtesy: 2G Energy
Explode in Coming Years 5

GLOBAL MONITOR
South Africa Energy Crisis at Critical Stage as Load-Shedding Continues 6
THE BIG PICTURE: U.S. Combined Heat and Power and Microgrids 8
Solar Power/Hydrogen Project Underway in DRC 9
Trial Operation of Innovative Horizontal Pelton Hydropower
Turbine Underway in Austria 10
POWER Digest 12

FOCUS ON O&M
Modernizing Cybersecurity Practices Within Utilities 14
Improve Electric Grid Resilience Through
Integration of Energy Storage at EV Charging Stations 15

LEGAL & REGULATORY 6

Renewables Need More Domestic Production of Minerals 16
By Karol Kahalley, Laura Granier, and Erica Nannini, Holland and Hart LLP

COVER FOCUS: COMBINED HEAT & POWER

A Complex Landscape for the Future of Combined Heat and Power 18
Combined heat and power (CHP), a mature distributed resource, faces head-
winds as the world races to decarbonize, owing to its reliance on fossil fuels.
But the CHP market is adapting. Along with key market shifts, the sector is
leading power sector incorporation of low-emission fuels, such as renewable
natural gas and hydrogen.

FEATURES:
ENERGY STORAGE
New Technologies, New Sites Supporting Growth of Energy Storage 22 10
Energy storage, whether from batteries, pumped hydropower, thermal systems
or other technology, is benefiting from the trend toward electrification. It also is
growing in importance as a way to support the integration of renewable energy
to the power grid.

POWER MARKET ANALYSIS

The Challenges and Opportunities Facing Power Companies Today 26
Investors are finding new opportunities in the energy sector, and utilities are
finding new ways to leverage their assets. Power generators, with the advent of
new technologies, are today major players in the financial markets.

22
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com 1
 MARNIE SURFACEBLOW
When Theory Becomes Practice, Rely on Practical
Experience as a Foundation 29
Marnie and Maya travel to the Philippines to troubleshoot issues at a test facil-
ity for torrefaction of biomass. The pair find many problems at the facility, not
least of which is a safety issue that puts workers in serious danger. However,
their recommendations are sure to get the plant operating more safely, reli-
ably, and efficiently.

FINANCE
Understanding How Securitization Can Help with
Power Plant Retirements 32
Utilities know it can be costly to close a power plant, but also know that choice

29 can be necessary. Securitization is a tool that power generators can use to

lessen the cost of taking a plant out of service.

GAS TURBINE
An Unplanned Outage, an Unconventional Plan,
and a Global Collaboration 34
A project to repair a gas turbine at a power plant in the UK became a global
collaboration, with the parts needed for the repairs located at a facility in
Argentina. What followed was a model of international cooperation to make
the logistics—which included bringing in another important part from Swit-
zerland—work.

Protecting Gas Turbines from High Temperatures, Humidity, and Dust 36

Operators of natural gas-fired power plants are always trying to improve
the efficiency of their facility’s turbines. A changing climate is making those
efforts more challenging, which means today’s turbines need better filtration
systems to protect them from harsh conditions.

32 CYBERSECURITY
Cyber Resilience for Wind Power Installations Web
Recent research at two national laboratories has provided insight into cyber-
security strategies and business cases for cybersecurity investments. These
findings will help renewable sector entities tailor an approach to evaluating
and implementing cybersecurity technologies for wind power plants. (Visit
powermag.com and search “Cyber Resilience for Wind Power” to read this
online-only exclusive.)

COMMENTARY
America—and the World—Needs More Nuclear Power 40
By Jeremy Harrell, ClearPath and U.S. Nuclear Industry Council

34 FIND THE LATEST POWER NEWS AT POWERMAG.COM

■G
 E Hitachi’s BWRX-300 Small Modular Reactor Gets Another Win
■N
 RC Rejects New Review of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant Operating Extension
CONNECT WITH POWER ■S
 iemens Gamesa Posts Nearly $1 Billion Quarterly Loss
If you like POWER magazine, follow ■O
 klo Readying to Deploy Commercial-Scale Nuclear Fuel Recycling Facility
us online for timely industry news and ■M
 ajor Nuclear Players Team on Innovative Construction Delivery Approach for
comments. BWRX-300 SMR at Darlington
■F
 ast Neutron Reactor Installed at Russian Research Facility
 ecome our fan at
B
■T
 exas Utility Will Close Remaining Coal-Fired Units
facebook.com/POWERmagazine
■E
 nergy Storage Being Added to California Gas-Fired Peaker Plants

 ollow us on Twitter
F ■G
 roup Says China Will Add 70 GW of Coal- and Gas-Fired Generation in 2023
@POWERmagazine ■1
 40 Workers Cut Permanently with Sammis Coal Plant Closure
■E
 PA Moves to Deny Coal Ash Disposal at Six Massive Coal Power Plants
J oin the LinkedIn ■J
 apan’s Largest Power Generator Signs Deals in Pursuit of Ammonia for Coal
POWER magazine Group and Power Plant Co-Firing Project
the Women in Power Generation
Group
2 www.powermag.com |
POWER March 2023
 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY FOR THE GLOBAL ENERGY INDUSTRY SINCE 1882

EDITORIAL & PRODUCTION Visit POWER on the web: www.powermag.com

Editorial Director: Dorothy Lozowski, dlozowski@accessintel.com
Executive Editor: Aaron Larson, alarson@accessintel.com
Senior Associate Editor: Sonal Patel, spatel@accessintel.com
Senior Associate Editor: Darrell Proctor, dproctor@accessintel.com
Senior Graphic Designer: Tara Bekman, tzaino@accessintel.com
Senior Production Manager: Joann M. Fato, jfato@accessintel.com
Subscribe online at: www.powermag.com/membership
POWER (ISSN 0032-5929) is published monthly by Access
Intelligence, LLC, 9211 Corporate Blvd., 4th Floor, Rockville,
MD 20850-3245. Periodicals Postage Paid at Rockville, MD
20850-4024 and at additional mailing offices.

Contributors: David Anteliz; Avraham Edelstein; Karol Kahalley; Laura Granier; Postmaster: Send address changes to POWER, 9211
Erica Nannini; Una Nowling, PE; Melissa Barber; Tim Nicholas; Corporate Blvd., 4th Floor, Rockville, MD 20850. Phone:
Jake P. Gentle; Jay Johnson; and Jeremy Harrell 800-777-5006, Fax: 301-309-3847, email: clientservices@
accessintel.com.

Vice President and Group Publisher, Canadian Post 40612608. Return Undeliverable Canadian
Energy & Engineering Group: Matthew Grant, 713-343-1882, mattg@powermag.com Addresses to: IMEX Global Solutions, P.O. BOX 25542,
London, ON N6C 6B2.

ADVERTISING SALES Subscriptions: Available at no charge only for qualified

Western U.S./Canada: Christopher Hartnett, 713-823-8333, chartnett@accessintel.com executives and engineering and supervisory personnel
Eastern U.S./Canada/Latin America: Terry Davis, 404-634-5123, tdavis@powermag.com in electric utilities, independent generating companies,
Europe: Petra Trautes, +49 69 5860 4760, ptrautes@accessintel.com consulting engineering firms, process industries, and other
China: Rudy Teng, +86 13818181202, rudy.teng@enlib.com manufacturing industries. All others in the U.S. and U.S.
Japan: Katsuhiro Ishii, +81 3 5691 3335, amskatsu@dream.com possessions: one year $115.97 and two years $191.00. In
India: Faredoon B. Kuka, 91 22 5570 3081/82, kuka@rmamedia.com Canada: one year US$125.97 and two years US$199.00.
Outside the U.S. and Canada: one year US$237.00 and two
years US$388.00. Payment in full or credit card information
is required to process your order. Subscription request must
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
include subscriber name, title, and company name. For new
Senior Marketing Manager: Jennifer McPhail
or renewal orders, call 847-501-7541. Single copy price: $59.
Fulfillment Manager: George Severine
The publisher reserves the right to accept or reject any order.
Allow four to twelve weeks for shipment of the first issue on
CUSTOMER SERVICE
subscriptions. Missing issues must be claimed within three
For subscriber service: pwr@omeda.com, 847-559-7314
months for the U.S. or within six months outside U.S.
Electronic and Paper Reprints: Wright’s Media, accessintel@wrightsmedia.com, 877-652-5295
List Sales: MeritDirect, Danielle Zaborski, dzaborski@meritdirect.com, 914-368-1090
For customer service and address changes, call 800-
All Other Customer Service: 713-343-1887
777-5006 or fax 301-309-3847 or e-mail clientservices@
accessintel.com or write to POWER, 9211 Corporate Blvd.,
BUSINESS OFFICE 4th Floor, Rockville, MD 20850. Please include account
Access Intelligence, 11000 Richmond Avenue, Suite 690, Houston, TX 77042
number, which appears above name on magazine mailing or
send entire label.
ACCESS INTELLIGENCE, LLC
9211 Corporate Blvd., 4th Floor, Rockville, MD 20850-3245 Content Licensing: For all content licensing, permissions,
301-354-2000 • www.accessintel.com reprints, or e-prints, please contact Wright’s Media at
Chief Executive Officer: Donald A. Pazour accessintel@wrightsmedia.com or 877-652-5295.
Chief Operating Officer: Heather Farley
Exec. Vice President & Chief Financial Officer: John B. Sutton General mailing address: POWER, 11000 Richmond Avenue,
Chief People Officer: Macy L. Fecto Suite 690, Houston, TX 77042.
Division President, Energy & Engineering,
Healthcare and Aerospace: Jennifer Schwartz Copyright: 2023 Access Intelligence. All rights reserved.
Vice President, Digital: Jonathan Ray
Vice President, Production, Digital Media & Design: Michael Kraus
Vice President of Finance: Tina Garrity
Vice President, Corporate Controller: Daniel J. Meyer

4 www.powermag.com |
POWER March 2023

Deployment of Carbon
Capture Technology Likely
to Explode in Coming Years
Aaron Larson
I
haven’t always believed carbon cap-
ture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)
technology would play a big role in
the energy transition. While I knew the
technology was sound and has been
used at commercial-scale for more than
20 years, I thought the capital costs,
operations and maintenance expense,
and heat rate and capacity-derating pen-
alties would preclude extensive use of
CCUS technology. However, my view
has changed.
High Demand for Carbon Capture
Many experts say large-scale deployment
of CCUS technology is imperative for the
world to achieve net-zero carbon emis-
sions goals by 2050. In a special report
published by the International Energy
Agency (IEA), it says, “Reaching net zero
will be virtually impossible without CCUS.”
There are several other studies that have
produced similar findings. During a media
briefing hosted by the CCUS industry-
advocacy group Carbon Capture Coalition,
Xan Fishman, director of Energy Policy and
Carbon Management with the Bipartisan
Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.–based
think tank, offered insight from the Net-
Zero America study, a two-year project
conducted by researchers at Princeton
University. “They had five major models—
every single one of them required CCUS
to achieve net zero,” Fishman said.
Taking it a step further, Fishman ex-
plained that the researchers “ran a bunch
of variants of their modeling,” and vari-
ant number 55 was particularly notable.
“They tried to artificially constrain things
so that no CCUS was allowed, and what
they found is that no feasible model would
work with that constraint,” said Fishman.
Going back to the IEA report, it says the
global carbon management industry will
need to capture eight gigatons of CO2 per
year to reach net zero by 2050. Mahmoud
Abouelnaga, solutions fellow with the
Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
(C2ES), suggested that’s equivalent to
removing eight times the CO2 emissions
from every coal power plant in the U.S.
today. That’s mind-boggling.
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
Investments Are Happening
A lot of money is being spent on carbon
capture, not only by private companies
trying to gain a foothold in the potential
market, but also by the U.S. government
to help enhance and promote the tech-
nology. “Carbon management has seen
an incredible increase in federal policy
support over the last decade or so,” said
Madelyn Morrison, government affairs
manager with the Carbon Capture Coali-
tion. “The 117th Congress passed two of
the most consequential packages for cli-
mate and energy policy in the nation’s his-
tory, and funding and policies to support
the commercialization of carbon manage-
ment were really essential pieces of both
of those broader packages,” she said.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), for
example, significantly enhanced and re-
structured the 45Q tax credit to make it
more easily accessible to the energy and
manufacturing sectors, among others.
The provisions include a seven-year ex-
tension of the commence-construction
window, which gives project developers
a concrete investment horizon for devel-
oping projects. Now, projects that com-
mence construction before Jan. 1, 2033,
will be able to qualify for 45Q.
But that’s not all. Congress also passed
the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs
Act, or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,
as it’s often called. That act made the sin-
gle-largest investment in carbon manage-
ment technologies in history—about $12.1
billion in funding over five years for com-
mercial deployments, large-scale demon-
strations, and other programs to enable
the deployment of the full value chain of
carbon management technologies.
Cost Curves Will Come Down
While first-generation capture technolo-
gies are ready for commercial-scale
deployment today, new capture tech-
nologies are in various stages of devel-
opment, and many of them promise to
significantly lower costs and improve
performance of carbon management
systems. Morrison said measures en-
acted by Congress over the past couple
of years “are going to be really critical
SPEAKING OF POWER
for driving down costs and making these
projects more economical.”
A couple of companies working to im-
prove performance of systems and shift
cost curves in the right direction are Carbon
America and Carbon Capture Inc. Reece
Rushing, director of Policy and Govern-
ment Affairs with Carbon America, said his
company is developing a cryogenic point-
source capture system called FrostCC. He
said the system is set to undergo testing
early this year at the National Carbon Cap-
ture Center in Wilsonville, Alabama.
Carbon America’s system is designed
for low-cost, mass-manufacturing with
modular scalable components that can
be used for the full range of permitting
industries, according to Rushing. He said
it doesn’t use water or added chemicals,
and the company expects it to be “two to
five times cheaper than existing systems.”
It also promises improved performance,
reportedly capable of capturing greater
than 99% of CO2 emissions, while also re-
moving other hazardous air pollutants in-
cluding SOx, NOx, mercury, and particulate
matter. Commercial availability is expect-
ed by 2024 for 100,000 ton/year systems,
and by 2026 for 1 million ton/year designs.
Meanwhile, Patricia Loria, vice presi-
dent of Business Development with
Carbon Capture Inc., a company keenly fo-
cused on direct air capture (DAC) technolo-
gy, touted her group’s recently announced
Project Bison, “which will be the largest
direct air capture facility in the world in
Wyoming.” The project is expected to be
operational by late 2023, at which point,
it would be the first atmospheric carbon
removal facility to use Class VI wells for
permanent storage, as well as the first
massively scalable DAC project in the U.S.
“We are able to make those commit-
ments because of the support of IRA. That
increase of the tax credit to $180 really
does make feasible a significant amount
of deployment … and that’s really critical
to getting cost reduction down. ... We do
believe that carbon management is going
to be a cost-effective part of the solution,”
said Loria. I’m beginning to agree. ■
—Aaron Larson is POWER’s
executive editor.
5
South Africa Energy Crisis at
Critical Stage as Load-Shedding
Continues
The energy crisis in South Africa has
prompted continued calls for government
action, and officials in January said an en-
ergy action plan announced last year is
starting to be implemented. The plan was
laid out by South African President Cyril
Ramaphosa a year ago, and designed
with a long-term goal of securing a reli-
able supply of electricity for the country.
Mondli Gungubele, a government min-
ister, at a news conference in late Janu-
ary said, “There is no immediate panacea
to this crisis,” which has become a criti-
cal issue as power utility Eskom has
implemented stage 6 load-shedding—
removing as much as 6 GW of electricity
from the national grid to prevent it from
collapsing, by cutting power to different
parts of the country at various times.
Load-shedding, accomplished through
a series of rolling blackouts, has been
part of South Africa’s power grid since
2007. Gungubele, though, said the gov-
ernment is working to “ensure full and
effective implementation of the Energy
Action Plan,” even as Johannesburg resi-
dents continue to live with blackouts oc-
curring for hours at a time, as often as
three times each day.
Eskom reported that nearly 16 GW
of generation was offline the last week-
end of January due to unplanned break-
downs, while another 6.5 GW was out
of service for planned maintenance,
1. Eskom in November 2022 said several people were arrested at the coal-fired Camden
Power Station (pictured), charged with stealing coal, sabotaging the plant, and committing coal
fraud—bringing coal mixed with worthless material to the plant. The utility said some truck driv-
ers were arrested for carrying stolen coal that was to be delivered to Eskom. Courtesy: Eskom
6 www.powermag.com
contributing to an elevated level of con-
cern. Government data shows South Af-
rica has about 54 GW of installed power
generation capacity.
Eskom in a statement in late January
said the utility “is making every effort to
reduce the duration of these outages as
much as possible. Although the stages
of load-shedding have been high, and for
extended periods, this does not indicate
that the power system is approaching a
blackout,” it said. “In fact, load-shedding
is implemented to ensure the appropriate
reserve margins are maintained to man-
age the risk of a blackout. Therefore, there
is no higher risk of a blackout than normal.”
“Like the COVID-19 pandemic, the
current energy crisis raises the necessity
for a societal response,” said Gungubele.
“All parts of society need to pull together
and play their respective roles if we are
to overcome the electricity crisis.” The
minister added, “The energy crisis we
are facing is not unique to South Africa.
There is currently a global energy crisis,
and therefore we must work together to
address the crisis.” Load-shedding by Es-
kom has gotten worse in recent years,
with officials saying 2022 was the worst
year ever for blackouts, and with load-
shedding occurring on every day so far
this year at least through early February.
Most of South Africa’s electricity—near-
ly 80%—is produced at coal-fired power
plants, with much of the rest generated
by facilities burning oil and diesel, accord-
ing to the BP Statistical Review of World
Energy. About 5% of the country’s power
comes from two reactors at the Koeberg
nuclear power station, with the rest gen-
erated by renewable power resources.
Ramaphosa at a late January meeting
with senior officials of his African Na-
tional Congress party said the coal-rich
country must transition to more renew-
able energy, but said it can’t immediately
abandon coal. He noted existence of
“the perception that we are called upon
to make a tradeoff between energy secu-
rity and a just transition to a low-carbon
economy,” and said the country does not
have to make “a choice between coal
and renewable energy.” The president
said, “Our energy architecture is 80%
coal-powered, [and] there is just no way
we are going to close those power sta-
tions ... just like that.”
Ramaphosa said the ongoing energy
crisis is due in part to the country’s ag-
ing coal plants, which need mainte-
nance. State-funded Eskom also has not
had enough money to buy a sufficient
quantity of diesel fuel to run emergency
generators to produce more power. The
country in the past two years has re-
ceived billions of dollars in international
grants and loans, with the money target-
ed for renewable energy development.
Andre de Ruyter, Eskom’s outgoing
CEO, in January said the utility is “paying
for the sins of the past” after not signing
contracts in 2014 to build more renew-
able power generation, which he said
was contributing to the continued load-
shedding. De Ruyter, who submitted a
letter of resignation to Eskom officials in
mid-December 2022 but will continue in
the role into this month, recently said he
survived a cyanide poisoning attempt the
day after deciding to resign.
De Ruyter, who became Eskom’s CEO
in December 2019, has said some of the
problems with South Africa’s power sec-
tor stem from what he called endemic
corruption that has impacted much of
the country’s economy. De Ruyter has
repeatedly said he thinks organized
gangs have infiltrated Eskom and have
been stealing from the company. He
also has said he thinks crime syndicates
have been taking both spare parts and
coal from the company’s power plants
(Figure 1), and deliberately sabotaging
power stations to win contracts for main-
tenance and repair work.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
|
POWER March 2023

met with South African Finance Min-
ister Enoch Godongwana in Pretoria in
late January. Their discussions included
ways to move South Africa away from its
reliance on coal-fired power and toward
more renewable energy resources. Yel-
len said the U.S., as part of the Biden
administration’s commitment to improve
relations with African nations, is focused
on energy issues on the continent. Ra-
maphosa—who stayed in South Africa
rather than attending the recent World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
due to the energy situation in his coun-
try—has said he wants South Africa to
begin phasing out some coal-fired gen-
eration as part of a target for net-zero
carbon emissions by 2050.
“South Africa has been sustaining in-
creasingly frequent blackouts, with 2022
being the worst on record,” said Irina
Tsukerman, a geopolitical analyst and pres-
ident of Scarab Rising, a business advisory
company. “In essence, Eskom is a symp-
tom rather than a cause of the ongoing is-
sues. The breakdowns in 11 coal-powered
plants just last week [late January] caused
Eskom to implement further cuts.”
Tsukerman told POWER that even
with the load-shedding outages—in
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
some cases for as long as 12 hours a day
in total for various regions—Eskom is
still not able to satisfy electricity demand
at peak times, which she said could
reach as high as 34 GW. “Having one
state-funded utility company fully reliant
on the government for funding is just a
tip of the iceberg,” Tsukerman said. “De-
pendency on the coal plants and failure
to transition to gas or other more sus-
tainable or transitional forms of energy is
another significant concern.”
Tsukerman said the U.S., UK, and the
European Union “have pledged $8.5 bil-
lion to South Africa for energy transition,
but even receiving that money will take
time and there is no guarantee that that
money will not disappear as previous
funding has from various projects.” Yellen
in public comments during her visit said,
“As you know, South Africa is the first
country with a just energy transition part-
nership to which the United States was
proud to commit as a partner. This part-
nership represents South Africa’s bold
first step towards expanding electricity
access and reliability and creating a low-
carbon and climate-resistant economy.”
Gungubele at his news conference
said the government has begun relaxing
GLOBAL MONITOR
some energy project licensing require-
ments, to support faster approval of gen-
eration projects to enable more private
investment. He said 18 “skilled special-
ists” have been brought back by Eskom,
including three former power station
managers, to help rebuild the utility’s
“technical capacity.” The minister said
the government is actively collaborating
with external stakeholders that have ex-
pressed interest in helping Eskom.
He also said maintenance is being pri-
oritized at the six largest coal-fired plants
in the country, including the Kusile sta-
tion, where three of the plant’s six 800-
MW units were taken offline in October
2022 after the collapse of a flue-duct unit.
South African media in late January said
Eskom officials have been meeting with
treasury agents to find funding for need-
ed repairs at Kusile. A source told the Mail
& Guardian news service that there is “no
quick fix for the chimney because the util-
ity does not have equipment that will hold
the chimney upright. The temporary solu-
tion will take at least 12 months to build.
Importing a ready material that will hold
the chimney would be too expensive and
we can’t afford it at this time.”
Gungubele, while touting the gov-
7
 GLOBAL MONITOR

THE BIG PICTURE: U.S. Combined Heat and

Power and Microgrids
As of December 2022, the Department of Energy (DOE) CHP Installation Database recorded 4,674
combined heat and power (CHP) installations in the U.S., with a combined capacity of 80.4 GW.
Installations were all sizes, from large industrial systems that are hundreds of megawatts to small
commercial microturbine and fuel cell systems that are tens of kilowatts. The database also captures
microgrid installations in the country. Source: DOE CHP and Microgrid Installation Database (February
2023). —Sonal Patel is a POWER senior associate editor.

Capacity (kW)
CHP INSTALLATIONS MICROGRIDS
2
500,000
1,000,000
1,738,000

Prime Mover Technology

Backpressure steam turbine Microturbine
Boiler/steam turbine Organic Rankine Cycle
Combined cycle Other
Combustion turbine PV By Capacity: By Site:
80.4 GW 4,674 sites
Fuel cell Reciprocating engine operate in the U.S.
Heat recovery steam generator
with a steam turbine

Solid Process gas 1. Chemicals (29%)

Wood biomass (1%) 2. Petroleum refining (19%)
(2%) (1%) [12] 3. Pulp & paper (15%)
[11] 4. Food processing (5%)
Black liquor
[10] 5. Primary metals (5%)
(4%)
6. Utilities (4%)
7. District energy (4%)
[9]
8. Oil/gas extraction (4%)
Coal [8] [1] 9. Colleges/Universities (3%)
(11%) Natural gas [7] 10. Transportation
(73%) equipment (1%)
[6] 11. Wood products (1%)
[5] 12. Hospitals (1%)

[4] Less than 1%: wastewater treatment,

[2] agriculture, solid waste facilities,
[3] rubber and plastics, machinery,
government, military, textile
products, air transportation,
multi-family buildings, mining and
others.
By Fuel By Application
8 www.powermag.com |
POWER March 2023

ernment’s efforts toward building more
power generation infrastructure, said,
“These examples of interventions that
are underway demonstrate the urgency
that is being put into fixing the energy
challenges. These cannot be implement-
ed overnight.” The minister said the gov-
ernment wants to enable construction
of “substantial” new power generating
capacity. “Some of this power will be
bought by Eskom through the renew-
able energy program, which has been
expanded and accelerated,” he said.
“In the last six months, agreements
have been signed with independent
power producers for 26 projects, which
together will generate around 2,800
MW. Another major source of new gen-
erating capacity will be solar panels on
the roofs of houses and businesses.
Work will soon be completed on a pric-
ing structure that will allow customers to
sell surplus electricity from rooftop solar
panels into the grid. That way, they can
meet their own power needs and help
increase the amount of electricity on the
grid,” said Gungubele.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior associate
editor for POWER.
SOME JUDGE ENGINES
ON POWER.
OTHERS ON TECHNOLOGY.
WHY NOT BOTH?
Because power and technology are what FPT engines deliver, and have been
for more than a century. Our engines not only offer options that deliver power
from 37kWe up to 515kWe, they also feature the technology that keeps you
working in the most extreme environments.
• Dependable, heavy duty power
• Eliminate low temp, low load issues
• Increase fuel efficiency
Learn more at fptindustrial.com
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
Solar Power/Hydrogen Project
Underway in DRC
Hydrogène de France (HDF Energy) has
entered into a partnership with the gov-
ernment of Kinshasa, a city-province
and capital of the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC) in Africa, for construc-
tion and operation of a photovoltaic (PV)
solar power plant that would be used to
produce green hydrogen. Officials said
it’s the first such solar/hydrogen project
planned in Central Africa, following on
a similar agreement reached in Novem-
ber 2022 to build a hydrogen plant pow-
ered by renewable energy in Namibia in
southwestern Africa.
HDF Energy, an independent power
producer, in January announced it had
begun a feasibility study for the Kinshasa
installation. Flavien Nkui Misuru, a com-
missioner-general in Kinshasa’s govern-
ment, said regional authorities welcomed
the project because it would support the
area’s electricity supply and bring more
economic opportunities with its hydrogen
production. Misuru said the government
would plan more similar projects should
the HDF effort prove successful.
Kinshasa, like other provinces in the
• EGR-free combustion
• DPF-free after treatment systems
• Reduce maintenance & increase uptime
GLOBAL MONITOR
DRC, depends on hydroelectricity for
most of its power supply—in its case
98%. That’s problematic as drought
conditions impact the supply of water
across Africa, including for the Congo
River that borders Kinshasa. The DRC’s
hydropower dams have combined gen-
eration capacity of 2,844 MW, according
to government data. The National Invest-
ment Promotion Energy group, known
as ANAPI (Agence nationale pour la pro-
motion des investissements), estimates
only about 44% of Kinshasa’s residents
have access to electricity. Officials have
said taking advantage of the region’s so-
lar power potential will be critical to sus-
tain economic growth.
The DRC government in 2020 moved
forward with a 600-MW solar photovol-
taic plant, called Kinshasa Solar City, in
Menkao, a district located in the munici-
pality of Maluku in Kinshasa. That project
was led by Sun Plus, a subsidiary of The
Sandi Group (TSG), a global provider of
infrastructure improvement and mod-
ernization services. The solar farm feeds
into the power grid operated by National
Electricity Co. (Snel), the state-owned
utility. The Solar City project was de-
Meet us at
booth #S83941
9
 GLOBAL MONITOR
2. HDF Energy is a global provider of large-scale hydrogen-to-power infrastructure, using re-
newable resources combined with the company’s fuel cell systems. Courtesy: HDF Energy
signed to incorporate other smaller PV
solar installations, with eventual cumula-
tive capacity of about 1,000 MW.
HDF Energy is based in Bordeaux,
France. The company develops and oper-
ates high-capacity, large-scale hydrogen-
to-power infrastructure, to provide firm
or on-demand electricity from renewable
resources such as wind and solar (what
it calls Renewstable plants), combined
with high-power “MultiMegawatt” fuel
cell systems (Figure 2). Officials said the
solar/hydrogen power plant would be lo-
cated in the southern part of Kinshasa.
Provincial authorities said they support
HDF “to make effective progress in the
development of this first hydrogen pow-
er plant.” Misuru, who heads Kinshasa’s
division responsible for energy, livestock,
and fisheries, said, “In a context where
we need to rapidly reinforce the means
of electricity production for the city-prov-
ince, the power plant project by HDF,
given its technical characteristics, is wel-
comed with great satisfaction. Through
the measures we are putting in place un-
der the memorandum of understanding,
we are seeking to encourage the emer-
gence, as soon as possible, of this first
hydrogen power plant project, which can
then be duplicated.”
The population of Kinshasa is estimat-
ed at more than 17 million, spread over
a vast area. It is one of 26 provinces in
the DRC, and the third-largest metropoli-
tan area in Africa after Cairo, Egypt, and
Lagos, Nigeria. Officials have said the
region is prone to load-shedding to help
balance the electricity supply with de-
mand, a situation noted by Misuru in his
comments about needing more power
10
generation projects.
Nicolas Lecomte, HDF’s director for
Southern and Eastern Africa, said his
company’s new facility would help satisfy
more of Kinshasa’s power demand. “Our
solution, the Renewstable high-power
hydrogen power plant, is particularly suit-
able not only to support the necessary
electricity but also the network services
to improve the stability and operating
conditions of the electricity supply. In
addition, our solution is an alternative of
choice of supply isolated networks and
contributing to the national development
program of the 145 territories. It can be
deployed in rural and remote areas. Also,
the hydrogen component of our projects
allows the country to acquire skills that
will make it possible to better seize op-
portunities in the field.”
HDF has installed or is building its re-
newable, large-scale power plants in sev-
eral countries. The group in November of
last year formed a partnership with the
U.S. International Development Finance
3. Types of hydraulic turbines. From left to right: Francis turbine, Pelton wheel, and Kaplan
turbine. Courtesy: Enel Green Power
www.powermag.com
Corp. to facilitate construction of power
plants in Indonesia, along with PT Nus-
antara Power, a division of state-owned
electric utility PT PLN Persero. HDF said
it has a pipeline of 22 renewable hydro-
gen energy projects, representing an
investment of $1.5 billion, being built in
Indonesia.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior associate
editor for POWER.
Trial Operation of Innovative
Horizontal Pelton Hydropower
Turbine Underway in Austria
A pioneering horizontal, six-nozzle Pel-
ton turbine developed by Voith Hydro at
the 326-GWh Gerlos 1 pumped storage
facility in the Ziller Valley, Austria, is set-
ting new benchmarks for the 140-year-
old technology. The long-time German
manufacturer of hydropower equipment
in January said trial operation of the in-
novative Pelton wheel, which replaced
the plant’s four vertical Pelton turbines,
has been “running successfully for over
two months now,” achieving an efficien-
cy level that compares to the vertical
configuration.
Developed by American inventor Les-
ter Allan Pelton in the late 1870s to op-
timize energy production for Western
mining operations using lower-volume
mountain streams, the Pelton wheel is
an impulse-type hydraulic turbine with
a fairly simplistic design, which can be
configured on a horizontal or a vertical
axis. It essentially comprises a large
circular disk with elliptical cup-shaped
blades (buckets) mounted on a rotating
shaft (rotor). When a high-speed water
jet from the penstock (a pipeline from
the water reservoir) is injected through a
nozzle, it hits on a Pelton wheel bucket,
inducing an impulsive force that forces
the turbine to rotate, and the rotating
shaft runs a generator to produce power.
So far, the horizontal-axis configuration
|
POWER March 2023

4. Impressions from the Pelton test rig at Voith Hydro’s Brunnenmühle Research and Develop-
ment Center in Germany. Courtesy: Voith
has been limited to two injectors, while
vertical-axis turbines can feature up to
six injectors, which are typically mount-
ed symmetrically around the wheel.
The Pelton turbine’s working principle
is well-suited to water sources with rela-
tively high hydraulic heads at low flow-
rates. In contrast, the 1848-invented
Francis turbine—the most commonly
used hydraulic turbine—is a reaction-
type turbine that operates with a partially
submerged runner, where water reaches
the wheel through a spiral conduit. The
1913-invented Kaplan turbine is an axial
turbine with adjustable blades that, like
boat propellers, rely on the flow of water
to turn the blades.
Francis turbines are typically used for
low- to medium-water heads (from up to
10 meters [m] to 400 m), while Kaplan
turbines can perform optimally at small
height differences but also with large
variations in capacity (200 m3 per sec-
ond and above). Pelton turbines are used
for large height differences (from 300 m
to 1,400 m) and less than 50 m3 per sec-
ond of water capacity (Figure 3).
According to the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the first
operational Pelton wheel was installed
at the Mayflower Mine in Nevada City in
1878, but it was dramatically scaled up
in 1895 when a 30-foot-diameter wheel
was installed at a gold mine in Grass Val-
ley, California. “Pelton’s invention trans-
formed the American West by replacing
expensive, bulky steam engines at min-
ing and construction sites with low-cost
hydroelectric power. By the turn of the
century, the age of hydroelectric power
was flourishing,” ASME notes.
Widespread uptake of the Pelton tur-
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
bine was, in large part, spearheaded by
Voith. “From the beginning, the devel-
opment of Pelton turbine technology
has been synonymous with Voith,” the
company noted. “Since the turn of the
20th century, Voith has supplied thou-
sands of Pelton turbines, including large
and powerful machines.”
The company has also gradually re-
Efficient boiler cleaning with
Shock Pulse Generators
· Permanent and automated
boiler cleaning, thus lower
exhaust temperature and
higher boiler efficiency
· No steam consumption,
no thermal abrasion or
damaging of boiler tubes
· Higher plant availability by
longer boiler traveling period,
less cleaning needs during
maintenance stops
www.explosionpower.ch
GLOBAL MONITOR
fined the technology using flow simu-
lation, which has enabled realistic
analysis of the Pelton turbine’s unique
flow characteristics. “Today, design-
ers have new insights into complex jet,
bucket, and casing flow phenomena
providing a solid basis for the develop-
ment of new bucket profiles that result
in improved performance,” it said. But
while the company has showcased its
development in a series of remarkable
projects worldwide, its development,
installation, and trial operation of the
first horizontal, six-nozzle Pelton turbine
marks a technological leap.
The breakthrough stems from inten-
sive study by German researchers to
develop multi-nozzle horizontal Pelton
units. A key challenge has been devel-
oping a suitable housing for multi-nozzle
horizontal turbines that can withstand
efficiency, aeration, and structural stress-
es, which are rooted mainly in how wa-
ter circulates in the casing. Voith said
its development of the innovative six-
nozzle horizontal turbine was partly due
to its newly developed ability to analyze
housing flow (Figure 4). “The interaction
between the water jet and the buckets
of the Pelton wheel is extremely short,
11
 GLOBAL MONITOR
5. Voith Hydro deployed a heavy transport operation to get the 54-ton housing for its innova-
tive six-nozzle horizontal Pelton turbine from its manufacturing facility in St. Poelten, Austria, to
Verbund’s Gerlos 1 plant site in the Ziller Valley in Tyrol. Verbund AG operates eight hydropower
plants at five reservoirs in the scenic Zillertal Alps. Courtesy: Voith
often just a few milliseconds,” the com-
pany explained. This is why the flow
simulation of Pelton turbines is by far the
most complex and difficult of all hydrau-
lic turbomachinery simulations.
“The housing in a Pelton turbine
needs to guide the water being dis-
charged by the runner in such a way
that it leaves the housing without back-
splashing on the runner, because that
would lower the efficiency,” Voith told
POWER. “For two-jet machines, this
is relatively simple because at two
points along the circumference water
is impinging on the jet. Therefore, only
some guide vanes inside the housing
are necessary. If more than two or
three jets impinge on the runner, the
amount of water per bucket width is
dramatically increasing. Also, the posi-
tions at which the water is discharged
by the runner are distributed all along
the runner.” The new concept uses
a circular or polygonal cover sheet
around the runner that serves on one
side as a guide vane for the discharging
water and on the other side as a protec-
tion for the runner from back splashing
water. “The housing is more complex
and larger. However, it provides a much
higher power density than two-jet ma-
chines,” the company said.
After extensive tests and pilot pro-
grams, Voith bagged its first customer,
Austrian utility Verbund. Verbund of-
fered to demonstrate the technology at
Gerlos 1, located at the southern end
of the holiday resort village of Rohrberg
in the Zillertal on the steep slope of the
Rohrerberg. The plant, which was built in
phases and completed in 1949, had four
12
vertical Pelton turbines and was due for
an upgrade.
Among challenges Voith highlighted
were getting the 54-ton turbine housing
to the plant site (Figure 5). “Apart from
its weight, the dimensions of the unit
were also impressive: just under nine
meters long, more than six meters wide
and over four meters high. This logistical
masterstroke could be accomplished
by means of a heavy transport opera-
tion taking an entire three nights,” the
company noted.
However, the triumph of demonstrat-
ing the turbine’s operation has ushered
in fresh potential for hydropower world-
wide, Voith suggested. “[T]he technolo-
gy is of particular interest for upgrades
of existing hydropower plants where
single- or double-nozzle horizontal
units are already installed,” it noted.
“This is because the turbine can be re-
placed without major structural works,
which significantly reduces civil costs
and installation times.”
The company also said “enormous
potential” exists to increase efficiency
at hydropower plants equipped with
Pelton turbines. “The associated poten-
tial reduction in the number of turbines
can likewise lower future maintenance
costs. The new development is also a
winning solution for new systems, as
it requires less excavation and is more
compact with a smaller footprint than
conventional solutions. This is also as-
sociated with a shorter installation time,
which substantially reduces the overall
investment costs.”
—Sonal Patel is a senior associate editor
for POWER.
www.powermag.com
POWER Digest
Pakistan Begins Commercial Opera-
tion of 1.3-GW Coal Plant. Pakistan on
Feb. 7 began commercial operation of
a 1.3-GW coal-fired power plant in the
Thar Desert in Sindh province, south-
ern Pakistan. The project, built as part
of the Thar Coal Block-I Coal Electricity
Integration project, was developed by
China’s Shanghai Electric Group. Es-
timated to cost about $2.5 billion, the
project comprises two 660-MW sub-
critical Shanghai Electric units. It will
use local lignite supplied by Sino Sindh
Resources Ltd. (SSRL), a Shanghai
Electric subsidiary. SSRL was awarded
a 30-year mining lease for Thar Coal
Block-I in October 2011. As part of the
project Shanghai Electric is also build-
ing a 6.8 million tonnes per annum
(mtpa) open-pit mine. The Thar project
is one of 16 priority projects developed
under the 2013-signed China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor (CPEC) framework.
According to Pakistan’s CPEC Author-
ity, 13 projects have already been com-
pleted, including 6.3 GW of coal-fired
power projects, 600 MW of solar, 300
MW of wind, and 720 MW of hydro-
power. Another 630 MW of coal-fired
capacity is under construction along
with 870 MW of new hydropower. Sev-
eral other coal, wind, and hydropower
projects are also “under consideration,”
the authority said.
Saudi Arabia Relaunches 7.2 GW
of Gas Power Projects with CCS
Requirement. Saudi Power Pro-
curement Co. (SPPC), Saudi Arabia’s
state-owned power project develop-
ment arm, on Jan. 21 has relaunched
four new combined cycle gas turbine
(CCGT) projects—a combined capac-
ity of 7.2 GW—with an imperative that
any bids must ensure the projects will
be carbon-capture ready. The projects
include two phases of the 3.6-GW Qa-
ssim IPP (Qassin IPP 1 and 2) project
and two phases of the 3.6-GW Taiba
IPP project (Taiba IPP 1 and 2). On Jan.
31, SPPC also specified 21 parties that
are pre-qualified to bid for the projects.
The CCGT plants will be built in align-
ment with the kingdom’s “Green Initia-
tive,” which seeks to achieve net-zero
carbon emissions by 2060 in addition
to the objectives to ensure supply se-
curity, diversity of market participation,
and fair competition. SPPC indicated it
would re-tender the Qassim and Taiba
projects with a carbon capture readi-
ness in December, six months after the
ministries of Finance and Energy fully
|
POWER March 2023
 GLOBAL MONITOR
nationalized SPPC, as part of the kingdom’s efforts to re- considering more than 20 projects based on the technology in
structure its electricity sector, and introduce financial and or- sunbelt locations worldwide.
ganizational reforms. SPPC’s new role now involves planning Estonia Sets Out to Build First Pumped Storage Plant.
and putting forward projects, and concluding power purchase Zero Terrain, a 550-MW underground pumped storage plant
and wholesale agreements, developing energy trading mar- that energy firm Energiasalv is developing in Estonia received
kets, and purchasing fuel. an official permit to begin construction on Jan. 24. The proj-
South Korea Submits Proposal for Four Nuclear Reac- ect, Estonia’s first large-scale energy storage project, will be
tors to Türkiye. South Korea’s Korea Electric Power Corp. built in Paldiski, northwestern Estonia. It will provide 6 GWh
(KEPCO) has submitted a preliminary proposal to build four of storage capacity (during one storage cycle of 12 hours). En-
1,400-MW nuclear power plants in northern Türkiye. Türkiye ergiasalv said it planned to continue with pre-qualification for
reportedly asked KEPCO to submit a proposal for the project construction procurement, and it will seek to finalize the tender
in December, including how KEPCO will develop and build the process by the end of 2023. Construction start is slated for the
project. “The two sides began discussions on the project in summer of 2024.
earnest. They will carry out a feasibility test to come up with Hexicon Secures Permits to Connect 7.1 GW of Floating
an optimum way to push for the project,” KEPCO said in a Wind to Italian Grid. Italian transmission system operator
press release on Jan. 31. KEPCO is leading South Korea’s tar- Terna SpA on Jan. 19 granted floating wind power project de-
get of exploring 10 nuclear power reactors by 2030, and it is veloper Hexicon permits to connect six floating wind power
actively marketing OPR1000 and APR1400 units to countries sites to the national grid. The six wind farms, which could use
in the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. South Hexicon’s proprietary TwinWind floating wind design (featuring
Korea is currently involved in a $20.4 billion contract to build two turbines on one foundation), are still under development
four APR1400 nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates off the coasts of Sardinia, Sicily, and the mainland, in Pug-
(UAE)—a combined output of 5,600 MW. UAE nuclear opera- lia. Hexicon expects a seventh site will soon be permitted. The
tor Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp. (ENEC) began operating development marks a big leap for Italy’s efforts to ramp up its
Unit 2 at the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in March 2022, a renewable production, which aim in part to cut dependence on
year after it began commercial operation of Unit 1. Unit 3 has Russian gas. “With a vast coastline and excellent wind resourc-
been grid-connected and is currently in the commissioning es, especially in the deep waters of the Mediterranean Sea,
phase. Unit 4 is 92% complete. ENEC says that once the four Italy has a strong potential for floating wind,” Hexicon noted.
units are fully operational, they will provide up to 25% of the The Global Wind Energy Council suggests Italy is one of the
UAE’s energy. In January, notably, ENEC and Korea Hydro top five emerging markets for offshore wind. ■
and Nuclear Power signed a memorandum of understanding —Sonal Patel is a senior associate editor for POWER.
to expand their cooperation on future South Korean nuclear
plant exports, as well as on research and development for
small modular reactors and microreactors.
GE Connects 1.2-GW Pumped Storage Plant in China. GE
Hydro Solutions on Jan. 31 successfully connected all four
units of the 1.2-GW Jinzhai pumped storage power plant in
Jinzhai County, Anhui Province, China. GE supplied the plant’s
four 300-MW pumped storage turbines, generator-motors, as
well as the balance of plant equipment. The hydropower proj-
ect is expected to stabilize China’s grid and help it integrate
more renewables in its energy system. The project is part of
China’s ambitious plan to install more than 200 pumped stor-
age stations with a combined capacity of 270 GW by 2025. GE
said it has so far delivered more than 12 GW of pumped stor-
age solutions in China, which represent more than 25% of the
installed base in the country.
Australia Closer to Building First Commercial CSP
Power Plant. Australia’s Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)
on Feb. 13 approved a conditional grant of AU$65 million to
fund Vast Solar’s construction of VS1, a 30-MW/288-MWh
concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Port Augusta, South
Australia. The grant is conditional upon the AU$203 million
project’s financial close, which is targeted in late 2023. Vast
Solar expects construction of the plant could take two years,
and it anticipates start of commercial operations in late 2025.
ARENA said the project will demonstrate how CSP can pro-
vide reliability and scalable dispatchable renewable energy to
the Australian market. VS1 will use Vast’s modular tower CSP
v3.0 technology, sodium as a heat transfer fluid, and a patent-
ed control system to generate dispatchable power with more
than nine hours of thermal energy storage. The technology
was proven in 2017 at Vast’s 1.1-MW grid-connected demon-
stration project in New South Wales. Vast said it is currently

|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com 13
 O&M
Modernizing Cybersecurity
Practices Within Utilities
The utility industry needs to be prepared
to adapt at this time of uncertainty and
change, rising prices, and international tur-
moil. However, it is becoming more chal-
lenging to comply with regulations and
reduce risks as attacks against the infra-
structure we depend on for energy, water,
and food are becoming more frequent.
According to IBM, the average cost of
data breaches rose to $4.4 million glob-
ally, which is a 13% increase from 2020.
Skybox Research Lab also observed that
organizations with operational technol-
ogy (OT) environments tend to underes-
timate the risk of a cyberattack, and that
87% acknowledged that they had experi-
enced at least one breach in the previous
36 months.
The utility industry must protect its
critical infrastructure and supply chains
as energy production becomes decen-
tralized, more digital, and increasingly
decarbonized. That said, regulatory com-
pliance and risk mitigation are more chal-
lenging than ever, and vulnerabilities for
utility organizations are increasing at an
unprecedented rate.
OT Systems in Remote Areas
Although no industry is immune from
cyberattacks (Figure 1), utility companies
with OT environments are especially at
risk. It’s understandable to want to bridge
the OT and information technology (IT)
gap given that centralizing and unifying
remote management while extracting
data analytics is equally valuable in board-
rooms as it is on the factory floor. Howev-
er, as a result of closing this gap, access
to sensitive data is now possible through
internet-connected devices, increasing
the attack surface. Three potential issues
are brought on by OT systems’ longevity
and deployment in remote areas.
First, it makes software obsolescence
more likely. Software obsolescence hap-
pens when the developer and a desig-
nated third party stop offering regular
updates, upgrades, and fixes, or when
the target environment, systems, and
hardware change, making the software
inoperable. Second, it is likely to result in
unpatched vulnerabilities because simple
patching techniques may need extensive
change management procedures due to
the possibility of equipment failure or
14
unexpected dangers. Lastly, it leads to a
cybersecurity talent gap where special-
ized IT/OT architecture skills are lacking.
De-Risking IT/OT Convergence
Today’s business executives must get
ahead of threats by looking around cor-
ners. Complete visibility and end-to-end
teamwork are the pinnacles of secure
network management, and the only
way to navigate remediation complex-
ity. IT and OT teams need solutions that
advance a collaborative approach to pri-
oritize critical vulnerabilities, strengthen
security resilience, and reduce down-
time. Here are five steps to de-risk IT/OT
convergence in the utility sector:
■ Establish a mature, reliable, and enter-
prise-wide security posture manage-
ment system. Unfortunately, many
businesses are having to play catch-up
when it comes to their security strate-
gies. Teams spend more money on
point solutions to address yesterday’s
exploitations. This reactive approach
perpetuates a vicious pattern in an at-
tempt to keep up with the ever-changing
threat landscape. Organizations should
instead concentrate on implementing
a mature and standardized enterprise-
wide security posture management
program. With visibility and context
across IT and OT environments, utility
leaders may minimize risk exposure by
streamlining security planning, deploy-
ment, and repair procedures.
■ Implement automated processes to
lower the risk of misconfiguration and
maintain compliance. In a multivendor
environment, the volume and variety
of security controls, rules, and policies
required make supervision and change
management more difficult. Compli-
ance is also a problem if necessary
upgrades aren’t implemented. Work-
flow automation reduces the chance
of misconfigurations by removing hu-
man errors, streamlining procedures,
and including change processes and
validation. Teams can also establish
globally applied standards and guaran-
tee future compliance.
■ Develop a common understanding
among OT, IT, and security. Utilities
must have access to a full view of
their attack area. Skybox’s recommen-
dation is to apply a network model.
This offers visualization of all environ-
www.powermag.com
ments, both in their enterprise-wide
context, and with set rules and con-
figurations in mind. An enterprise can
execute simulations and evaluations
on all devices, vulnerabilities, and con-
figurations when using the network
model. Therefore, businesses can
use their network model to evaluate
the efficacy of security controls. Most
importantly, a company also can check
configurations and changes, identify
and precisely measure their exposure,
and assess access compliance with
network segmentation regulations.
■ Remove security blind spots and silos.
Teams can work together to discover
and prioritize crucial vulnerabilities
by combining and standardizing data
from various devices. If IT teams im-
prove visibility, understand what de-
vices are in scope, how they interact,
and what access they have to the en-
vironment, they can patch accurately
and immediately without interrupting
production. Teams can also patch gaps
using passive assessment technology,
which finds vulnerabilities in restricted
network areas. For OT risk teams, hav-
ing access to both active and passive
vulnerability-identifying technology is
crucial for gaining quick insights and
providing scanless detection.
■ By leveraging remediation options
beyond patching, downtime can be
reduced. This method enables enter-
prises to determine the most dan-
gerously exposed vulnerabilities and
selects the best way to mitigate these
risks. This flexibility is essential, partic-
ularly in OT environments with stricter
requirements. Teams need a solution
1. Locking down both operational technol-
ogy and information technology systems is
of critical importance to today’s utilities and
power generators, as access to sensitive data
becomes more available through internet-con-
nected devices. Source: Envato Elements
|
POWER March 2023

for calculating risk scores for assets
that considers these four crucial fac-
tors—the asset’s measured Common
Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)
severity, asset exploitability, asset im-
portance, and asset exposure based
on the security controls and configura-
tions in place throughout the network.
A comprehensive inventory of assets
and vulnerabilities spanning IT and OT
estates is the key to a successful cyber-
security strategy. The utility industry can
achieve complete visibility across the
attack surface, including third-party net-
works, through comprehensive model-
ing, analytics, and vulnerability detection
that is both passive and active. As a re-
sult, they will be able to better recognize
security threats, take preventative ac-
tion to address them, and safeguard the
most critical assets from vulnerabilities.
—David Anteliz is senior technical
director at Skybox Security.
Improve Electric Grid Resil-
ience Through Integration
of Energy Storage at EV
Charging Stations
By 2030, it’s expected that half of U.S.
car sales will be electric, and while this is
a positive step forward in transportation
decarbonization, this change also comes
with challenges and concerns pertaining
to grid readiness.
The Biden administration has an-
nounced a plan to install 75,000 miles
worth of electric vehicle (EV) charging
stations; however, it is not certain that all
desired charging locations are qualified
for these power requirements. New sites
might warrant power infrastructure up-
grades or be assessed with a utility tariff
structure that can present a challenge to
speedy deployment and add costs. Even
if such hurdles are overcome, the over-
all demand for energy must be closely
monitored to avoid a strain on the grid
that can result in disruptions.
In an effort to proactively prepare for
these challenges, charge point operators
(CPOs) can future-proof their upcom-
ing installations with the integration of
local energy storage systems (ESS),
particularly systems that offer artificial
intelligence (AI)-enabled peak shaving
capabilities. An ESS, combined with en-
ergy management system (EMS) soft-
ware that controls its operation, allows
site owners to benefit from a controlled
electricity demand.
The EMS’s main task is to provide a
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
2. Utilities and grid operators are preparing for the increased load from charging electric ve-
hicles (EVs). Having energy storage systems available at charging sites provides better control
of electricity demand from EV charging. Source: Envato Elements
continuous delivery of power according
to the site needs, and reduce demand
charges or grid strain at the same time. In
recent years, software technology in the
field of energy storage operation has pro-
gressed significantly to include advanced
AI algorithms that can monitor the site
and predict its load behavior and patterns
with high accuracy, bringing superior per-
formance and savings to CPOs.
Mass Adoption of Local Peak
Shaving Could Lessen Need for
Grid Upgrades
The demand for electricity at EV charg-
ing stations (Figure 2) has increased
recently and is expected to grow, as de-
mand for EVs continues to accelerate.
When the overall demand for electric-
ity is too high from charging and other
major loads, the grid becomes strained,
leading to potential blackouts and other
undesirable grid conditions.
Peak shaving allows site operators to
better control and mitigate electricity de-
mand by leveling out peaks in demand
while continuously delivering power
and reducing charges at the same time.
Adapting AI within ESS, site operators
can accurately predict load profiles while
supporting grid operations.
Peak shaving, when implemented by a
local ESS, can be widely adopted to meet
electricity demand, and increase grid reli-
ance as the number of EVs grows. This
also means being able to deploy a charg-
ing station in areas where current utility
infrastructure is not available, slowing
down the deployment and impacting re-
turn on investment (ROI).
Fast charging sites, which may be lo-
cated next to a convenience store, su-
permarkets, or other retailers, usually
include more loads than just a charging
station; therefore, looking at the solu-
tion from an operations and mainte-
nance standpoint, integrating ESS with
FOCUS ON O&M
the right design can provide backup for
the site itself in a blackout period. This
makes the site more resilient and adds
a source of revenue by providing backup
for utilities when needed during times of
peak demand.
Matching energy storage with an EMS
and smart charging solution enables dy-
namic load balancing and increases grid
flexibility. Moving forward, this approach
will ensure grid robustness and support
for versatile loads at disparate locations
that would otherwise require a massive
infrastructure investment.
Offsetting EV Charging Site
Demand Without Reducing Power
There are many functions and applica-
tions for energy storage integrations, but
currently the main factor driving deploy-
ments of these systems is a desire to
ease site demand charges and facilitate
quick deployments where utility infra-
structure is not available. The EMS can
predict the highest peak and strategi-
cally discharge the battery when the
site reaches that peak. This enables the
site to peak shave effectively and avoid
demand spikes without having to com-
promise on convenience or user experi-
ence, which is especially important for
direct current fast charging (DCFC).
In order to keep up with the energy
transition, we must work to support the
grid and provide local cost-effective ESS.
ESS and related software developments
can fulfill various applications that will
support accelerated use of EVs and grid
integration without causing instability or
incurring high costs for operators. ESS
that are compatible with on-site charging
infrastructure and offer peak-shaving ca-
pabilities are available today and only be-
coming more economical, more energy
dense, and quicker to deploy. ■
—Avraham Edelstein is vice president of
research and development at Sparkion.
15
 LEGAL & REGULATORY
Renewables Need
More Domestic
Production of
Karol Kahalley, Laura Granier, and Erica Nannini
Minerals
C
limate legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act,
which aims to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions up to
43% below 2005 levels by 2030, has shifted the already
critical need for domestic minerals into overdrive. The ability to
meet rapidly growing demand depends largely on eliminating
obstacles to domestic production.
There are immediate opportunities to process permits more
efficiently under existing laws, such as eliminating unneces-
sary delays in the Federal Register publication of notices. For
example, notices of intent and availability are published to in-
form the public that a federal agency intends to prepare an
environmental analysis, or will be making a version of that anal-
ysis available for public review and comment. This involves no
substantive decision, yet could add 12 months to 24 months
to the process.
The Biden administration has recognized the urgent con-
cerns, including national security, the environment, and human
rights abuses overseas, that require a shift to domestic pro-
duction of critical minerals. President Biden in February 2021
ordered a review of vulnerabilities in our critical mineral and
material supply chains. The assessment released in June 2021
found that the U.S. over-reliance on foreign sources and adver-
sarial nations for critical minerals and materials posed national
and economic security threats, requiring the Department of
the Interior to identify sites where critical minerals could be
produced and processed in the U.S.
These efforts build on a decades-long congressional direc-
tive. More than 40 years ago, Congress declared “the continu-
ing policy of the United States to promote an adequate and
stable supply of materials necessary to maintain national se-
curity, economic well-being and industrial production” in the
National Materials and Minerals Policy, Research and Develop-
ment Act of 1980 (NMMPA). At that time, Congress expressed
frustration with the lack of progress in domestic mineral devel-
opment 10 years after enacting the Mining and Minerals Policy
Act of 1970 (MMPA), which declared a “national interest to
foster and encourage private enterprise in the development of
economically sound and stable domestic mining, minerals …
and mineral reclamation industries.”
With the increasing urgency to reduce the nation’s depen-
dence on foreign critical minerals, Congress has now directed
the “Executive Office of the President to act immediately to
promote the goals contained in the MMPA among the various
departments and agencies,” and amended the NMMPA to re-
quire federal agencies to “avoid duplication of effort, prevent
unnecessary paperwork, and minimize delays in the adminis-
tration of applicable laws (including regulations) and the issu-
ance of permits and authorizations necessary to explore for,
develop, and produce critical minerals.”
Congress also mandated that the agencies “facilitate the
16 www.powermag.com
availability, development, and environmentally responsible
production of domestic resources to meet national material
or critical mineral needs.” Congress acted again to encourage
the development of domestic supply chains for critical miner-
als through the Infrastructure and Jobs Act in November 2021,
which requires agencies to take immediate and constructive
actions to increase domestic mineral production.
The federal agencies have pockets of excellence that could
provide blueprints for complying with these urgent directives,
and eliminating the unnecessary delay in the Federal Register
publication process is just one example. While the Interagency
Working Group had launched a broad examination of questions
including possible reform of the 1872 Mining Law, that law
is a land tenure law. Permitting concerns must be addressed
through environmental laws. Recent suggestions to change to
a leasing system for critical minerals could create significant
obstacles with litigation and uncertainty in the process, and
have a substantial chilling effect on investment.
The issue of demand outstripping supply is only worsening.
Lithium demand is expected to grow from 263,000 metric tons
in 2019 to 2,114,000 metric tons in 2030. Demand for lithium
batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) alone is expected to in-
crease by more than 1,200% between 2021 and 2040. The lack
of lithium supply will be a limiting factor to achieving domestic
and global climate change goals.
While innovation in renewables production should remain
a focus, the need for domestic production of minerals will
persist. For example, innovative industry efforts to reduce or
eliminate the need for cobalt in EV batteries are underway to
curb U.S. reliance on countries producing cobalt, but nickel is
used as a primary replacement for cobalt and is also primar-
ily sourced outside the U.S. Moving toward increased reliance
on untapped domestic critical mineral deposits will ensure that
mining practices to procure minerals critical to our green en-
ergy future adhere to the “highest environmental, labor, and
sustainability standards” in the world.
The key to walking back U.S. reliance on foreign minerals is
immediate action to implement the clear congressional direc-
tives to prioritize permitting efficiencies. Given its vested inter-
est in the production of critical minerals, the renewable energy
industry should be a vocal part of efforts to identify local field
offices of federal permitting agencies that have successfully
implemented permitting timelines, and lobby the administra-
tion and executive agencies to use those experiences more
broadly to find efficiencies in the regulatory process. ■
—Karol Kahalley, Esq. is a minerals expert and of counsel at
Holland and Hart. Laura Granier, Esq. is a partner at Holland and
Hart, advising energy and mining clients. Erica Nannini, Esq. is
an associate at Holland and Hart, working with renewable
energy developers and mining companies.
|
POWER March 2023
POWER
YOUR
BUSINESS
with sustainable
cogeneration and
trigeneration
solutions

INNIO*’s flexible, scalable, and resilient Jenbacher*

CHP and CCHP energy systems deliver power, heat
and/or cooling for your local site while supporting
your decarbonization efforts. Yielding up to 95%
total efficiency, cogeneration can reduce your
energy consumption and CO2 emissions by more
than 30% compared to the separate generation of
power and heat, significantly lowering your energy
costs. Combined with heat storage, you can operate
your asset flexibly. Jenbacher CHP and CCHP systems
run on a wide range of gases with the option of
converting to H2** operation once that fuel is more
readily available.

Join us on our path for a sustainable future!

innio.com

* Indicates a trademark.
** Optional scope on demand.

ENERGY SOLUTIONS.
EVERYWHERE, EVERY TIME.
 COMBINED HEAT & POWER
A Complex Landscape for
the Future of Combined
Heat and Power
Few power-generating resources present the combination of workhouse abilities
that combined heat and power (CHP) does. But, powered predominantly by fossil
fuels, will CHP find its unique footing within the energy transition?
Sonal Patel
C
onsidering all its hefty attributes,
combined heat and power (CHP)
should thrive as the world races to
transition to an energy system character-
ized by more efficiency and lower emis-
sions. The energy resource, sometimes
referred to as “cogeneration,” is a long-
proven multitasker, generating on-site
power and useful thermal energy using
different technologies and various fuels.
Its production of two forms of energy
is highly efficient—at least when evalu-
ated against comparable separate heat
and power sources. Some systems can
achieve total system efficiencies of more
than 80%.
CHP can vary in size, satisfying distrib-
uted or captive energy requirements for
a variety of end-users, providing heat and
power to hospitals, schools, university
campuses, hotels, nursing homes, office
buildings, and apartment complexes, as
well as for larger district energy systems,
microgrids, factories and other industry,
and even utilities. And perhaps uniquely
for a distributed resource, CHP is resil-
ient and can provide crucial reliability:
Capable of producing heat and power
24 hours a day, it can be designed to
operate independently from the grid or
implemented with black-start capability
to provide a reliable, cost-effective alter-
native to installing backup generators.
Owing to these attributes, the technol-
ogy has enjoyed an expansion worldwide,
surging 30% between 2009 and 2019.
According to global industry group CO-
GEN World Coalition (CWC), the annual
output of CHP systems in 2019 amount-
ed to 11,200 TWh of heat and 4,159 TWh
of electricity, representing just over 15%
of total electricity generation. But that
share “has wobbled around,” varying by
region (see sidebar, “How CHP Is Evolv-
ing Around the World”), and overall, it
has diminished amid increasing demand,
18
noted Simon Minett, managing director
for Challoch Energy and a CHP expert.
How CHP Is Evolving Around the World
According to the COGEN World Coali-
tion (CWC), which represents major
players in combined heat and power
(CHP), the world’s most developed
markets for CHP technologies are cen-
tered in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the
Americas, and to a smaller extent, in
Africa and Australia. Each region has
its own characteristics in terms of CHP
capacity, market sector focus, and fuel
use (Figure 1), Simon Minett, manag-
ing director of research and analysis
consultancy firm Challoch Energy, said
in November.
While Europe currently produces
700 TWh of CHP power—mostly
from steam turbines and combined
cycles gas turbines—its share of CHP
within the total electricity mix of 20%
has fallen, owing in part to the en-
ergy price crisis. “There’s not much
growth in that market. It’s a mature
market, and Europe is focusing on a
lot of renewables and electrification,
so we can see some pressure on
cogeneration there. It has a decent
role to play, but it’s an active policy
debate,” Minett said.
Europe’s CHP plants, led by Germa-
ny, are mostly powered by natural gas,
followed by renewable sources like
biofuels and biomass. However, coal
still makes up a large share of Eastern
Europe’s CHP production.
North America’s CHP market produc-
es about 330 TWh, representing about
6.8% of the total electricity mix. This
share has also fallen, even though the
market has mostly “remained flat over
the last decade,” Minett said. Natural
gas is CHP’s dominant fuel in both the
U.S. and especially Canada, though
fuel mixes vary by region. Central and
www.powermag.com
Future growth of CHP at the same
rate over the next decade, meanwhile,
1. The COGEN World Coalition estimated
that in 2019, more than half (59.39%) of
combined heat and power (CHP) systems
worldwide relied on coal and coal products,
and nearly a third (32.28%) relied on natu-
ral gas. Less than 1% of the world’s CHP
plants were powered by peat, oil shale and
sands, nuclear, geothermal, and renew-
ables like solar and wind. Source: COGEN
World Coalition
South American CHP markets, which
are much smaller, producing 87 TWh,
rely 70% on biofuels, including bio-
mass, biogas, and waste. Brazil makes
up to 90% of the region’s total CHP ca-
pacity, he noted.
The world’s largest CHP market by
far is in the Asia-Pacific region, produc-
ing nearly 3,000 TWh—a substantial
portion of CHP’s global total of 4,000
TWh. “It’s seen steady growth in terms
of heat output,” but 68% of that market
is dominated by China, which produces
“almost all” its CHP energy from coal,
mainly for district heating, said Minett.
In total, the regional market relies on
coal for 75% of its CHP production and
25% from natural gas.
|
POWER March 2023

appears less certain, owing mainly to
CHP’s heavy use of fossil fuel. “The
big thing we’re seeing in the market is
decarbonization,” noted David Jones,
manager of Energy Markets for Virginia-
based global consulting and technology
services company ICF. “Everybody’s
talking about what role CHP will play.”
The pervading concern is that while
CHP currently reduces emissions com-
pared to separate heat and power, as re-
gional power grids go green, “CHP may
not be able to reduce emissions any-
more at some point,” he said. “At that
point, they [will need to] incorporate re-
newable natural gas [RNG] or hydrogen
to continue reducing carbon emissions.”
Trends: Smaller Installations That
Cater to Resiliency, Reliability
Jones, who is part of ICF’s efforts to
maintain a 2002-initiated Department of
Energy (DOE) database that logs CHP
installations in the U.S., noted these
concerns overarch several recent trends
in the CHP market. The most signifi-
cant shift, he said, is that CHP is mov-
ing away from traditional installations,
which were custom-engineered site-
specific systems at industrial or institu-
tional facilities. Following a CHP boom
in the late 1990s, manufacturers and
developers began offering standardized,
factory-built and ready-to-install pack-
aged CHP systems, prompting a market
shift that integrated smaller commercial
and residential markets.
In the U.S., the shift was bolstered by
the DOE’s publicly available CHP catalog,
which enabled interested parties to com-
pare “different systems that have been
installed—standard systems, with stan-
dard inputs and outputs,” Jones noted.
Bolstered with inclusive contracts, the
packages shorten CHP system procure-
ment, simplify installation, and alleviate
maintenance concerns—attributes at-
tractive to smaller, non-traditional end-
users like multi-family buildings and
smaller commercial, institutional facili-
ties, and manufacturing outfits, he said.
Meanwhile, CHP’s economics have
improved substantially over the past two
decades, driven partly by improvements
in gas engine and turbine technologies
concerning power, efficiency, durability,
emissions, and time or cost to market.
However, all equipment manufacturers
are striving to improve the efficiency,
reliability, and emission profiles of prime
mover technologies, including recipro-
cating engines, gas turbines, microtur-
bines, and fuel cells (Figure 2). Initiatives
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
2. Public power generator Korea East-West
Power’s (EWP’s) 4.2-MW CHP plant fea-
turing Bloom Energy solid oxide fuel cells
(SOFCs) opened in June 2022 in Donghae
City, South Korea. The utility uses heat from
the plant to supply hot water to a swimming
pool at the adjacent Bukpyeong Leisure
Sports Center. SK Ecoplant developed a
custom heat recovery system for the proj-
ect. Courtesy: SK Ecoplant.
underway are exploring, for example,
options for new cycles or working fluids,
controls, and control schemes that will
generally enable a new generation of
CHP plants to integrate with a dynamic
smart grid and distributed microgrids.
Bright Prospects for Hydrogen
As Jones pointed out, one of CHP’s big-
gest selling points has been its ability to
boost energy efficiency through reduced
fuel consumption. But to secure CHP
system relevance as the transition un-
folds, the sector will also need to dem-
onstrate renewable and lower-carbon
fuels, such as RNG and hydrogen, can
serve as primary fuel sources for CHP
systems. The U.S.-based Combined
Heat and Power Alliance, a trade group
that works to expand CHP markets, ap-
pears confident industry can achieve this
so long as critical barriers related to the
production, transportation, and storage
of “clean” hydrogen are addressed.
The group pointed to sectoral-wide
benefits for hydrogen utilization in CHP—
or “CHP 2.0.” Along with allowing CHP
systems to “reduce emissions even fur-
ther across the industrial, commercial,
and municipal sectors,” CHP systems
could use these fuels efficiently, “requir-
ing [fewer] lower-carbon fuel inputs for
the same energy outputs compared to
other generation units,” it said. “Efficient
use of hydrogen fuel should be central to
any hydrogen and climate strategy, and
CHP helps meet this goal.” Moreover,
as a distributed resource, CHP hydrogen
utilization would bolster renewables inte-
gration, microgrid deployment, and ener-
gy storage, as well as adapt to hydrogen
blending in gas infrastructure, it said.
The CHP Alliance noted that existing
and newly installed CHP systems al-
ready use hydrogen fuel blend volumes
COMBINED HEAT & POWER
that range from 20% to 100%. “Within
the decade, and in many cases much
sooner, new CHP systems will be ca-
pable of burning 100% clean hydrogen,”
it added. “Existing CHP systems, includ-
ing ones installed today, can convert to
100% hydrogen at a reasonable cost and
with minimal downtime because these
conversions can occur during scheduled
overhauls [which typically occur every
8 to 10 years for baseload units]. These
conversions are possible despite the fact
that CHP systems in the U.S. vary widely
in application, design, and size.”
So far, the overall impact and cost-
efficiency of hydrogen utilization at
larger installations are still under study.
Siemens Energy, for example, is evalu-
ating the economics of hydrogen CHP
at Duke Energy’s 14.3-MWe/33-MWth
SGT-400 Clemson CHP system at Clem-
son University in South Carolina. A mar-
ket for smaller-scale hydrogen-ready
systems, however, is already thriving.
In 2012, a pilot 160-kW Agenitor 306
CHP system manufactured by German
CHP technology firm 2G Energy at the
Berlin Brandenburg Airport showcased
100% hydrogen (wind gas) combus-
tion, and 2G has since commissioned
100% hydrogen–ready reciprocating en-
gine models at three other locations in
Germany, one in Scotland, and another
in Japan. In mid-2023, 2G will kick off
operation of its first North American hy-
drogen CHP project at an Enbridge Gas
facility in Markham, Ontario (Figure 3).
Emily Robertson, a 2G business devel-
opment team manager, told POWER that
a fundamental tenet of developing its
3. Enbridge Gas is building North America’s
first CHP system that will eventually run on
100% hydrogen to energize its Technology
Operations Centre (TOC) in Markham, Ontar-
io. The project’s 115-kW 2G Agenitor engine
will initially operate with a minimum blend of
25% hydrogen and 75% natural gas. Enbridge
estimates the CHP system could consume
approximately 78,000 kilograms of hydrogen
annually. Courtesy: 2G
19
 COMBINED HEAT & POWER
4. Danish utility Brønderslev Forsyning in 2018 replaced seven gas-fired CHP units and began
operating a district heating plant that utilizes two wood chip boilers, heat pumps, and solar heat-
ing from a 27,000-square-meter parabolic trough concentrated solar power plant supplied by
Denmark’s Aalborg CSP. The boilers and solar heat supply energy to a Turboden Organic Rankine
Cycle (ORC) turbine. During the summer months, the wood chip boilers can be shut down and
the solar collectors take over heat production. The ORC system converts 20 MWth into 4 MWe
and 15 MWth. Courtesy: Brønderslev Forsyning
fleet of hydrogen-ready Agenitor engines
was to “future-proof” 2G’s CHP systems
and provide 2G’s customers with crucial
fuel flexibility. “Fuel flexibility is hugely
important to many end-users. The abil-
ity to fuel blend for biogas and natural
gas is key to many biogas installations.
In addition, the ability to blend hydrogen
is absolutely boosting CHP’s efficiencies
and flexibilities,” she said. “2G’s natural
gas CHP systems can blend up to 40%
hydrogen. Those same systems can be
retrofitted later in the field to 100% hy-
drogen. If this is done at the time of the
engine’s major overhaul, it can be cost-
effective,” she said.
The CHP Alliance is hopeful hydro-
gen barriers will soon be resolved. For
more near-term prospects, the group
points to biogas and RNG (also known
as biomethane), commercial fuels that
it says “can be implemented immedi-
ately.” While CHP systems have long
used digester and biogas as fuel sourc-
es, farm waste and food waste facilities
represent significant emerging sources
for biogas production. RNG, mean-
while, can be generated from the direct
gasification or pyrolysis of biomass.
“The high methane content of RNG al-
lows for full compatibility within natural
gas appliances and pipeline systems.
CHP fleets that run on natural gas re-
quire minimal upgrades to be fueled
by RNG and would produce immediate
emission reductions by transitioning,”
the CHP Alliance noted. However, the
group acknowledges feedstocks for the
20
low-carbon fuel alternative are “rela-
tively lacking.”
Emerging Potential: CHP Hybrids
To thrive in decarbonized markets, the
CHP sector will also need to address
myriad other challenges, experts told
POWER. These include securing high
utilization rates, and ensuring reliabil-
ity, efficiency, and flexibility—all while
minimizing capital, infrastructure, and in-
tegration needs associated with carbon-
intensive processes.
One emerging solution entails explor-
ing hybrid system design and operation.
The optimized combination of solar,
storage, and CHP could provide “long-
duration, on-site energy for sites with
high-resilience needs with the least pos-
sible carbon emissions,” Jones noted.
A few projects are already pairing high-
temperature renewable sources with
CHP solutions. An example is Danish
utility Brønderslev Forsyning’s district
heating plant in northern Denmark.
Meanwhile, as CHP’s inherent reliabili-
ty and resilience attributes have bolstered
its uptake in microgrids, a new category
of microgrid installations—hybrid CHP
systems—also appears to be emerging.
According to the DOE, these systems in-
corporate a combination of CHP and oth-
er distributed energy resources (DERs)
in a single installation. As opposed to the
piecemeal installation of DERs, the defin-
ing characteristic of hybrid CHP systems
is coordination between developers of dif-
ferent DER technologies (such as CHP, PV,
www.powermag.com
and/or energy storage) to engineer and
optimize combined systems.
“A hybrid CHP system can provide
maximum resilience with minimal fossil
fuel emissions when configured as a mi-
crogrid. In a typical hybrid configuration
with CHP, solar PV, and energy storage,
CHP would be used for baseload power
and heat, while PV and storage are used
opportunistically to maximize renewable
output and participate in utility markets
for grid services,” the DOE said.
However, a key challenge associated
with microgrid CHP and hybrid CHP in-
volves establishing teams of DER de-
velopers and financiers that can deliver
multi-technology solutions. The prod-
uct is complex, and simplified power
purchase agreements (PPAs) with no
capital investment will likely be needed
to attract end-users. The agency not-
ed that more experience gained with
these systems could ultimately lead to
standardized packages.
Incentives and Future Profitability
Still, experts suggested that tackling
CHP’s capital-intensive investment re-
quirements, as well as market and regu-
latory barriers, could ultimately require
broader efforts. The U.S.-based CHP Al-
liance is hopeful that the August 2022–
enacted Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will
spur new development. Under the IRA,
investment tax credits will be available
to qualifying CHP systems that begin
construction before January 2025. CHP
projects that start construction after that
date may be eligible for production tax
credits only “if the project yields zero-
greenhouse gas emissions,” the alliance
stressed. The IRA, however, also pro-
vides tax credits for clean hydrogen pro-
duction, the group noted.
On the market front, evolving opportu-
nities include the outgrowth of PPA-style
contracts (which can be designed for
heat and power purchases). These con-
tracts allow developers to own, operate,
and maintain systems, allowing com-
mercial or smaller facility owners to ben-
efit from CHP’s myriad benefits without
committing to maintaining the energy
source. Along with these opportunities,
state-driven efforts to boost distributed
generation are cleaving new pathways
for non-traditional CHP entrants. Utilities,
for example, are integrating CHP into en-
ergy efficiency portfolios or becoming
owners and operators of CHP systems
at customer sites. ■
—Sonal Patel is a POWER
senior associate editor.
|
POWER March 2023
 Gas Turbine Parts
Lifetime Extension Clinic
Read three case study examples at www.MDAturbines.com/Clinic

Mechanical Dynamics & Analysis (MD&A) can extend the service life of gas turbine components
whose OEM service limit has passed or whose configuration is no longer suitable to operate.
Significant savings can be realized by opting for lower-cost repaired spares instead of new parts.

Our experts at the San Antonio Service Center combine years of experience with state-of-the-art
equipment to deliver the right solutions to you.

MD&A’s San Antonio Service Center

6948 Fairgrounds Pkwy | San Antonio, TX 78238
Ph: +1 (210) 256-5000 | www.MDAturbines.com

PARTS | SERVICES | REPAIRS

 ENERGY STORAGE
New Technologies,
New Sites Supporting
Growth of Energy Storage
Advancements in energy storage, including new battery types and longer-duration
batteries, are driving innovation in the sector. Retired power generation plants are
being repurposed as storage sites, and the residential and commercial and industrial
(C&I) sectors are turning to storage for electricity reliability and resilience.
Darrell Proctor
lion in 2022, representing year-over-year demand hours. For renewable energy

T
he U.S. and global market for energy
storage continues to grow, in large
part aligning with increased deploy-
ment of renewable energy facilities. Bat-
tery energy storage systems (BESS),
which store the energy from solar arrays,
wind farms, and more, are being used to
help balance the power grid, and provide
more reliability and resiliency, along with
other ancillary services.
Colin Touhey, CEO of Pvilion, a de-
veloper of innovative fabric-based solar
power equipment and whose customers
include the U.S. Air Force, told POWER,
“Energy storage will become ubiquitous
as an integral part of the grid. This growth
will continue and will only slow when all
potential grid options are saturated.”
What has been touted as the “Energy
Storage Decade” by industry analysts
and others has lived up to that billing, de-
spite hiccups caused by the coronavirus
pandemic and associated supply chain
issues. The global battery energy storage
system market was expected to increase
from $3.36 billion in 2021 to $4.34 bil-
growth of about 29%, according to a
January 2023 report from Research and
Markets, a global market research group.
The report said growth in the sector is
expected to top $11 billion in 2026—or
total growth of another 150% in the next
four years.
Energy storage, whether from batter-
ies, pumped hydropower, thermal sys-
tems, or other technology, is benefiting
from the move toward the electrification
of transportation, along with an empha-
sis on electrification of the commercial
and industrial, as well as residential,
sectors.
“Energy storage is the foundation
from which all renewable-sourced de-
carbonization efforts must be built,” said
Matt Clenchy, analyst with Orennia, a
technology company that provides data
and analytics on the energy transition
for investors. “Renewable energy is in-
termittent … because of this, high levels
of renewable penetration can threaten
grid reliability, so grid operators rely on
energy storage to shift energy to peak
to meaningfully displace baseload fos-
sil fuel generation, it must be deployed
alongside storage.”
Ryan Brown, CEO and co-founder
of Canada’s Salient Energy, said, “The
growth in energy storage will definitely
continue. Energy storage is critical to in-
tegrating large amounts of wind and so-
lar power into the grid.” Brown, whose
company develops zinc-ion batteries for
stationary energy storage, told POWER:
“Governments have set aggressive tar-
gets for renewable penetration that will
only be possible with significant invest-
ment in energy storage. I believe these
targets will be taken seriously for two
main reasons. First, the increasing oc-
currence of extreme weather is making
climate change an increasingly important
issue to everyday people. Second, Rus-
sia’s attempt to weaponize the EU’s [Eu-
ropean Union’s] dependence on its natural
gas has caused lawmakers to view the
transition to renewable energy as criti-
cal to national security. So, the growth
in energy storage will continue because
it is driven by issues that are becoming
increasingly important and urgent.”

New Battery Tech

New battery technologies are being de-
ployed for both economic and safety
reasons, with energy company execu-
tives telling POWER that alternatives to
lithium-ion will be needed to satisfy the
increased demand for storage.
“The ‘Decade of Energy Storage’? This
is the Energy Storage Era!” said Josef
Daniel-Ivad, manager of the Zinc Battery
Initiative. “Stationary energy storage ca-
pacity is forecast for 1.2 TWh by 2030
and a mind-boggling 9 TWh by 2050.
To meet this high demand, we need all
1. The Waratah energy storage facility is being built in Australia at the site of a former coal-fired types of sustainable, scalable batteries.”
power plant. It is expected to come online in 2025. Courtesy: Powin
“Building owners and operators are

22 www.powermag.com |
POWER March 2023
 REGISTER NOW!
June 25-28, 2023
Marriott New Orleans Hotel | New Orleans, LA
connectedplantconference.com
Digital technology improvements and an ever-growing field of applications
are reshaping the power and chemical process industries. Stay on top of key
trends and possibilities at the Connected Plant Conference –
the ONLY event covering digital transformation/digitalization for the
power and chemical process industries.
Hosted by: Diamond Sponsor:

Please visit connectedplantconference.com

for the most up-to-date event information. Follow us on:

POWER GENERATION • PETROCHEMICALS • NUCLEAR • GAS • RENEWABLES • COAL

TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION • SPECIALTY CHEMICALS • PLASTICS • PHARMACEUTICALS
OIL & GAS • REFINING • METALS & MINING • PULP & PAPER

41848
 ENERGY STORAGE
2. Tesla built the 98-MW/196-MWh Pillswood battery facility in the UK using its Megapack
technology. It is expected to support the massive Dogger Bank offshore wind project. Courtesy:
Harmony Energy Income Trust
rejecting lithium-ion batteries due to
their safety concerns, dwindling avail-
ability, and rising costs,” said Yaron Ben
Nun, founder and chief technology offi-
cer for Nostromo Energy. “Instead, ho-
tels, data centers, and other commercial
buildings are turning to a new generation
of alternative storage solutions that are
non-flammable and non-toxic. With the
emergence of new thermal energy stor-
age technologies, in 2023, commercial
buildings will turn to cleaner, cheaper,
and more reliable ways to power their
cooling systems, which can account for
over half of their energy use.”
Daniel-Ivad, in noting new technolo-
gies in addition to traditional lithium-ion,
told POWER, “Zinc batteries already pro-
vide superior stationary storage and are
poised to meet e-mobility demands, giv-
en zinc’s abundance, secure and stable
supply, non-flammability, and competitive
advantages.”
Mukesh Chatter, co-founder, CEO,
and president of Alsym Energy, said, “In
2023, we will witness the emergence
of a new generation of non-lithium,
non-flammable batteries that will take
on the challenge of filling the gap and
successfully facilitating the shift from
fossil fuels to solar and wind.” Chatter
told POWER, “As we strive to execute
the clean energy transition, increasing
the volume of available energy storage
alone is not enough. BloombergNEF re-
search suggests 20x growth in global
energy storage capacity by 2030—this
will only meet approximately 25% of
the storage needed to support the rise
in clean energy generation.”
24
Decarbonization and Sustainability
Demand is rising for energy storage
as the technology is being included in
decarbonization and sustainability pro-
grams. It also is being used to support
the grid integration of more renewable
energy resources.
Jason Burwen, vice president of En-
ergy Storage at the American Clean
Power Association, said recently, “De-
mand for energy storage is at an all-time
high, driven by sustained higher energy
prices, state decarbonization mandates,
and Inflation Reduction Act incentives.
California’s reliance on energy storage
to meet record peak demand this Sep-
tember [2022] shows why it’s absolutely
critical that policymakers and grid opera-
tors remove barriers to supply to ensure
reliability. The rapid increase in grid-scale
storage capacity requesting to connect
to the grid demonstrates that the pace
of U.S. industry growth is increasingly
dependent on the availability of transmis-
sion and timely grid access.”
Some of the increase in storage ca-
pacity will come from projects that are
helping repurpose sites where thermal
power plants have been retired. The last
two operating coal-fired power plants in
New Jersey will get new life as home
to battery energy storage systems, and
a major BESS project is being built in
Australia at the site of a former coal-fired
generation facility.
The Logan Generating Plant in Logan
Township in New Jersey’s Gloucester
County was imploded in December
2022. Starwood Energy, the plant’s
owner, has said the site will be turned
www.powermag.com
into a battery energy storage facility as
part of a $1 billion project. Starwood
said it will do the same with the Cham-
bers Cogeneration Plant in Carneys
Point, which Starwood also closed last
year and will dismantle.
U.S. battery specialist Powin, and en-
ergy investment firm BlackRock, have
started work on a 909-MW/1,915-MWh
BESS in Australia. BlackRock-owned
Akaysha Energy is developing the
Waratah Super Battery Project (Figure
1) north of Sydney, on the site of the
former 1.4-GW Munmorah coal-fired
power station.
Some projects are being designed
specifically to meet market require-
ments for fast frequency response.
Glidepath Energy recently launched op-
eration of its new Byrd Ranch Storage
Project, a standalone energy storage fa-
cility near Houston, Texas, for which IHI
Terrasun was the integrator, power plant
controls software developer, and lifetime
services provider. Energy storage is con-
sidered an important part of keeping the
troubled Texas power grid more reliable
and resilient. Terrasun’s software will
meet the Energy Reliability Council of
Texas’ (ERCOT’s) strict market require-
ments for fast frequency response.
“It’s likely that battery installations
will continue to permeate a variety
of applications, not just as replace-
ments for thermal generation through
large-scale projects,” said Ray Saka,
Terrasun’s vice president of Sales and
Service. “Green Mountain Power, a util-
ity in Vermont, ran a pilot virtual power
plant (VPP) project to install 2,000 bat-
teries in customers’ homes who had
solar panels on their roofs. The utility
discharged the batteries from their own
controller during peak summer heat
events, thereby decreasing the need for
the ISO [independent system operator]
to dispatch peaker plants, saving the
ratepayers money and headaches for
the operators.”
Long-Duration Systems
Energy industry experts agree that de-
velopment of long-duration storage is
critical for sector growth. Joe Zhou, CEO
of Quidnet Energy, told POWER about
his company’s geomechanical pumped
storage (GPS) technology.
“Most energy storage now being de-
ployed is short duration, meaning batter-
ies that can typically provide power for
up to four hours. While this is useful for
shorter-term backup, peak shaving, and
some ancillary services, long-duration
|
POWER March 2023

storage is essential for the widespread
integration of large-scale clean energy,”
Zhou said.
“Such resources also need to be cost-
effective, and ideally leverage existing
technology. That’s where geomechanical
pumped storage comes in,” said Zhou.
“GPS takes a proven concept for long-
duration storage, pumped hydro, and
makes it possible to more widely deploy
it at a fraction of the cost. While pumped
hydro is the dominant form of long-du-
ration energy storage, relying mostly on
gravity to generate power from hydro-
electric turbines, it can only be deployed
in areas with mountainous terrain. GPS
removes this constraint, as it can be in-
stalled in areas of flat land.”
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
late last year announced Quidnet Ener-
gy would receive $10 million in funding
from the agency’s Advanced Research
Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The
funding is part of the ARPA-E Seeding
Critical Advances for Leading Energy
technologies with Untapped Potential
(SCALEUP) program, which provides fur-
ther funding to previous ARPA-E teams
that have been determined to be feasi-
ble for widespread U.S. deployment and
commercialization. Companies in the
SCALEUP program demonstrate a viable
path to commercial deployment for their
technology, and the ability to attract pri-
vate sector investments.
“We’re honored that ARPA-E has se-
lected Quidnet Energy as an awardee
of the SCALEUP program,” said Zhou.
“This funding will support continued
work on our [GPS] project with CPS
Energy, which will demonstrate the
benefits of using proven pumped hydro
technology to create a long-duration en-
ergy storage resource that doesn’t re-
quire mountainous terrain.”
Quidnet Energy will scale its GPS to a
1-MW/10-MWh commercial system that
will provide CPS Energy with 10-plus
hours of long-duration energy storage.
A Tesla battery is featured at an en-
ergy storage project in northeast Eng-
land, near the grid connection point
for the massive Dogger Bank offshore
wind farm. Tesla built the 98-MW/196-
MWh Pillswood battery (Figure 2)
using its Megapack technology for Har-
mony Energy Income Trust, which is
investing in large-scale storage assets
around the UK.
The site is located near Hull, close
to the Creyke Beck substation that will
connect 2.4 GW of the eventual 3.6
GW of the Dogger Bank project, which
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
will be the world’s largest offshore
wind farm when it comes online in the
next few years. Harmony Energy, a UK-
based energy storage developer, said
the battery will help UK power network
operator National Grid “maximize the
efficiency of wind farms by reducing
the amount of time [they] need to be
curtailed due to supply/demand imbal-
ances or network constraints.”
Australia-based Redflow has a
2-MWh flow battery-based ESS (Figure
3) at Anaergia’s Rialto Bioenergy Facil-
ity in San Bernardino County, California.
The system includes 192 zinc-bromine
flow batteries housed in a dozen 160-
kWh Redflow Energy Pod units, which
are clustered into four strings, and tied
to four 125-kW Dynapower inverters.
The Rialto Bioenergy Facility is convert-
ing as much as 700 tons of food waste
and 300 tons of biosolids per day into
renewable natural gas, renewable elec-
tricity, and organic fertilizer.
Challenges Remain
Even with substantial growth expected
for energy storage, there remain hurdles.
Andy Tang, vice president of Energy Stor-
age and Optimization with Wärtsilä, told
POWER, “Persistent supply chain con-
straints caused by the COVID pandemic
and fierce competition for raw battery
materials with the transition to electric
vehicles will continue to cause energy
storage project delays in 2023.”
Tang continued: “There’s been a major
policy push to establish regional supply
chains in Europe and the U.S., but the
new factories won’t come online until
2024 or 2025 at the earliest. We antici-
pate increased investment in alternative
battery chemistries next year to alleviate
these concerns.”
“Energy storage systems are an
imperative part of the emerging en-
ergy mix, primarily as a mechanism
to maintain grid security and address
the intermittency of renewable energy
to a large extent,” said Tejas Kusurkar,
CEO and co-founder of Offgrid Energy
Labs. “Batteries for power backup ap-
plications is a major market among
stationary applications. While market
mechanisms are expected to incentiv-
ize the adoption of ESS, regulatory and
industry foresight will be key drivers to
accelerating growth.”
Pvilion’s Tuohey also noted how reg-
ulation could slow growth in energy
storage. “The regulatory hurdles make
energy storage more expensive than
it needs to be,” Tuohey said. “As an ex-
ENERGY STORAGE
3. This Redflow battery system is powering
Anaergia’s Rialto Bioenergy Facility in Califor-
nia. Courtesy: Zinc Battery Initiative
ample, solar installations on homes are
ubiquitous and easy to do. The same
types of building code changes that oc-
curred in the solar industry need to hap-
pen in the storage industry.”
A project recently announced in New
York is supported by a state program
designed to encourage development of
distributed energy resources, including
energy storage, to increase power grid
resiliency. CIT, a division of First Citizens
Bank, in December 2022 said its Power
and Energy business served as co-coor-
dinating lead arranger on an $85 million
construction-to-term debt financing for
NineDot Energy, which develops distrib-
uted community energy projects in the
New York City area. NineDot, a portfolio
company of the global investment firm
Carlyle Group, will use the funding to de-
velop 11 standalone battery storage proj-
ects totaling 43 MW of capacity across
the Bronx, Staten Island, Queens, and
Long Island.
“NineDot Energy’s battery storage
installations will be an increasingly im-
portant contributor to the New York City
metro area’s grid resiliency and a valu-
able infrastructure component to sup-
port renewable power in urban settings,”
said David Arfin, NineDot Energy CEO
and co-founder.
The New York project is an example
of the partnerships Touhey said will be
needed to support investment in energy
storage, with utilities and other energy
companies working together with gov-
ernment and private groups to promote
financial backing. “It will need to be a
partnership model, with the government
providing incentives and doing their own
projects as well as private industry lead-
ing the charge on new innovation and
growth,” he said. ■
—Darrell Proctor is a senior associate
editor for POWER.
25
 POWER MARKET ANALYSIS
The Challenges and
Opportunities Facing Power
Companies Today
The power system is changing and electricity suppliers need to adapt or get left
behind. Experts weigh in on what leaders should be focusing on and how these
items will affect utilities in the future.
Aaron Larson
T
he power industry has experienced
a whirlwind of activity in recent
years. In fact, some insiders might
argue that there’s never been more
change in the power system since the
grid’s inception than what we’ve seen
over the past 10 to 15 years. The trans-
formation goes beyond just the forms
of generation being deployed; it also
extends to technology utilized to oper-
ate and monitor the system, customer
and employee expectations, and what it
means to be sustainable. Looking ahead,
artificial intelligence and machine learn-
ing could result in even greater changes
in the not-to-distant future.
“Many utilities have been investing
time and capital into becoming more
than just providers of reliable service.
Customers expect predictable and af-
fordable electric service, but the level of
service, bill transparency, triage and res-
toration from outages, as well as menu
of additional and complementary ser-
vices, continues to expand and evolve,”
Jeremy Klingel, senior partner for West
Monroe’s Energy and Utilities practice,
told POWER. “This isn’t to take away
from the commitment and complexity of
remaining a provider of last resort, but an
emerging requirement to further serve
and collaborate with all customer class-
es (large, small, disadvantaged, etc.) to
enable additional resiliency, support ESG
[environmental, social, and governance]
goals, and chart a practical path to cost-
effective beneficial electrification.”
Challenges Exist, Leading to
Opportunities
To get a better understanding of how the
landscape is changing, and what chal-
lenges and opportunities exist, POWER
engaged with a handful of industry ex-
perts to get their perspectives (see
sidebar “Power Sector Mergers and
26
Power Sector Mergers and Acquisitions
After a record-setting year for power
and renewables mergers and acqui-
sitions (M&A) in 2021, there was a
marked reduction in deals last year.
“2022 activity was down slightly but
in line with what we expected given
rising interest rates and the deterio-
rating macro environment in the back
half of the year,” Ryan Luther, senior
vice president of Enverus Intelligence
Research, told POWER. “M&A mul-
tiples for generation pipelines have
to stay competitive with the cost
of new builds, so we expect M&A
prices to fall this year as the Infla-
tion Reduction Act pushes down the
cost of new renewable builds. Energy
storage startups have been growing
rapidly and earning outsized returns,
but it’s a capital-intensive business
and we’re expecting a record level of
storage deployments in 2023 and a
pick-up in grid storage deals to meet
those capital needs.”
Jeremy Klingel, senior partner for
West Monroe’s Energy and Utilities
practice, said his group continues to
see private equity firms showing inter-
est in clean technology, renewable en-
ergy, and critical infrastructure. “While
large-scale renewable energy assets/
portfolios make many of the headlines
due to their size, the volume and mar-
ket interest in battery energy storage,
Acquisitions”). Among items they said
electric utilities needed to watch were
supply chain issues, decarbonization
trends, workforce capabilities, and reli-
ability and resiliency requirements.
“The supply chain is all sorts of
messed up,” said Sarp Ozkan, vice presi-
dent of Commercial Product at Enverus.
“From the general supply chain issues
globally, to the Auxin anti-dumping/
anti-circumvention inquiry, to Biden’s
www.powermag.com
energy-as-a-service providers, ad-
vanced demand response platforms/
aggregators, carbon accounting, and
behind-the-meter clean back-up gen-
eration technologies are experiencing
a bit of a renaissance,” Klingel said.
“It’s also important to note the growth
and market interest in the service pro-
viders that design, engineer, build,
and maintain both emerging and tradi-
tional grid infrastructure. Those firms
will be the architects of the backbone
for the clean energy transition.”
GlobalData, a data and analysis so-
lutions provider, issued a report on
Feb. 3 that showed the value of power
sector M&A deals completed by the
industry’s top 10 financial advisors last
year was less than half the value of
those completed by the top 10 advi-
sors in 2021 ($204.221 billion versus
$467.338 billion). Yet, while the value
of deals was down more than 56% in
the survey, the number of deals facili-
tated by the top 10 advisors based on
volume was only down 19%.
Meanwhile, Klingel noted that a
trend has developed in which utili-
ties are spinning off businesses in
competitive markets. “There are a
number of regulated utilities doubling
down on their core business as in-
vestor-owned utilities are considering
the divestiture of their non-regulated
businesses, particularly large-scale
renewable portfolios,” he said.
temporary freeze on tariffs from select
countries, to the general increase in the
minerals intensity we are going to need
to realize a more than 14x increase in
carbon-neutral technologies, these all
impact the energy evolution in meaning-
fully negative ways.”
Yet, there are a number of ways power
companies can improve prospects for
success in the near- to mid-term. Scott
Tinkler, a managing director and global
|
POWER March 2023

1. Underground power lines are more reli-
able than overhead lines, particularly during
hurricanes and severe weather. Florida Pow-
er and Light says it has been installing un-
derground service for decades and has about
45% of its distribution system underground
today. The work shown here was done in
Port Charlotte, Florida, after Hurricane Ian.
Source: POWER
utilities lead at Accenture, said, “Acquir-
ing the talent for the energy transition is
paramount, starting with identifying all
the skills needed, and then training and
reskilling workers to do these jobs.”
Tinkler continued: “Becoming more
resilient to energy shocks is also critical,
which will require more effective man-
agement of cost structures to combat
inflation and high interest rates while
reimagining supply chain operations to
balance global disruptions. Looking a bit
further forward, some important areas
include grid modernization to support
the rapid development of low-carbon
infrastructure, and accelerating the shift
to clean energy technologies and inte-
grating more renewables into their gen-
eration portfolios. Lastly, reevaluating
strategies and approaches to regulatory
affairs, including rate case development,
permitting, and consenting will be vital.”
Tony Carrino, director of Power and
Utilities with Solomon Associates, sug-
gested utility leaders should take a good
look at their assets and develop plans to
adjust resources to better fit the future.
“The potential exists for a significant re-
valuation of generation assets by tech-
nology in the coming years. It will affect
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
2022 Record Year for Corporate PPAs
The American Clean Power Associa-
tion (ACP) released a report on Jan. 18
showing corporations had set a new
record for energy purchases last year.
The ACP said commercial and industri-
al (C&I) companies are driving demand
for renewable power and accelerating
the clean energy transition through
purchases of electricity directly from
wind, solar, and energy storage plants.
“Even as power purchase agree-
ment (PPA) prices increased, corpora-
tions purchased nearly 20 gigawatts
(GW) of clean energy in 2022, more
than 4 GW higher than any previous
year. By the end of the year, over 300
corporations had contracted more than
77 GW of clean energy,” the ACP said.
“Economic and environmental ben-
efits, as well as growing pressure on
corporations to meet sustainability tar-
gets, have led to a 100-times increase
in corporate clean power procurement
over the past decade. During that
same period, solar and wind costs
have decreased 71% and 47% respec-
tively, making both more attractive to
corporate energy buyers,” JC Sand-
berg, interim CEO and Chief Strategy
Officer at the ACP, said in a statement
announcing findings from the report.
The ACP said 326 companies had
PPAs in place for at least some of their
power at the end of the year, led by
2. Amazon announced on Jan. 31 that it had set a new record for “most renewable energy
purchased by a single company.” Its renewable energy portfolio now totals more than 20
GW across 401 projects in 22 countries, including 8.3 GW through 133 new projects added
in 2022. Courtesy: Amazon
changes in book value of installed gen-
eration assets,” he said. “While some
asset types will more quickly lose favor,
others will be deemed more necessary,
resulting in a repricing of assets in pur-
chases and sales. This repricing will likely
occur for two reasons: the relative envi-
ronmental impacts of each generation
technology and the realization of what
becomes the ‘optimum mix’ of genera-
tion technologies to recover and sustain
POWER MARKET ANALYSIS
Amazon (Figure 2), Meta, and Google.
Technology companies have contract-
ed more clean energy than any other
industry, according to the ACP.
Prices for solar PPAs have continued
to increase in North America, accord-
ing to LevelTen Energy, a provider of
renewable transaction infrastructure,
but the company said wind PPA prices
fell in the fourth quarter of 2022 for the
first time in nearly two years. LevelTen
Energy reported its P25 wind index,
which represents the market aver-
age of the 25th percentile PPA price,
dropped 1.9% to $48.71 per MWh.
Meanwhile, it said solar PPA prices
climbed 8.2% to $45.66 per MWh.
“We hope that falling wind prices
mean that they are beginning to stabi-
lize, thanks to factors like the Inflation
Reduction Act,” Gia Clark, senior direc-
tor of Developer Services at LevelTen
Energy, said in a statement issued
with the report. Clark said solar prices
continue to increase because of stiff
supply chain challenges. “The Uyghur
Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA),
while an important safeguard of human
rights, has slowed module imports to a
trickle, impacting project development
schedules and prices, and PPA deals.
Hopefully UFLPA compliance proce-
dures will become more efficient so
that we can see some relief for solar
prices, too,” she said.
electric grid reliability.”
Added West Monroe’s Klingel, “De-
carbonization gets a significant amount
of airtime and tends to center on utilities’
own generation fleets many times. While
that transition to cleaner fuel should con-
tinue, the move to a more sustainable
energy economy will be greatly fueled by
the commercial and industrial (C&I) sec-
tor. We are approaching a bit of an inflec-
tion point where utilities can become a
27
 POWER MARKET ANALYSIS
partner to the C&I market and help guide
that journey to cleaner, more efficient
energy operations. However, it will re-
quire an enhanced tool kit of distributed
resources to complement and, at times,
supplement traditional T&D [transmis-
sion and distribution] infrastructure.”
Klingel suggested investments in resil-
iency are important (Figure 1). “Resiliency
cannot be undervalued, yet it is difficult
to value in the traditional (utility) capital
investment sense,” he said. “Climatic
events, wildfires, hurricanes, or polar vor-
tex are year-round and not just an occa-
sional black swan. The balance between
physical infrastructure investment and vir-
tual infrastructure to balance and bolster
the grid is going to be critical.”
How the IRA Is Influencing the
Industry
Heading into 2023, one of the most im-
pactful drivers influencing U.S. power
markets (see sidebar “2022 Record Year
for Corporate PPAs”) has been the signif-
icant incentives contained in the historic
Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed in
August last year. “These incentives can
supercharge investment in solar, wind,
and energy storage—along with tax
credits that will buoy market prices for
carbon-free nuclear power,” said Tinkler.
“There will also be significant opportuni-
ties for power and utility companies to
drive growth from clean hydrogen to put
it at par with conventional hydrogen, with
the ability to pair credits with renewable
energy projects. Headwinds impacting
this clean energy surge include contin-
ued supply chain-related challenges, and
managing persistent inflation and its im-
3. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging can benefit both electric vehicle (EV) owners and the power
grid. V2G technology works by using EV batteries to charge when demand is low and to supply
energy to the grid when demand is high. To do so, the EV needs to have smart charge technol-
ogy and the grid needs to have dynamic load management capability. Source: Envato Elements
28
pact on costs and customer affordability.”
“The increasing tax credits that are
going to be created by the IRA will need
to be monetized,” said Ozkan. “With
transferability (the ability to sell tax cred-
its for cash), tax credits will be sold for
less than 100 cents on the dollar. Tax
equity structures will be more adept at
utilizing tax credits more efficiently, but
continue to be useful to only those who
can get it. So, how well the tax credits
can be monetized via transferability will
eventually become an issue for how well
capitalized these projects will be.”
But Carrino suggested more needs
to be done to enhance the power grid
itself. “In the Inflation Reduction Act
of 2022, the proportion of spending al-
located to new wind and solar project
development is far greater than what
is allocated to high-voltage transmis-
sion systems. In fact, the transmission
grid continues to lose ground to new
renewable projects, causing increasing
curtailments of renewables because the
transmission system has not kept up in
several U.S. markets,” Carrino said. “The
UK electric market is a great example
of the high consumer prices that result
when payments are made to curtail over-
generation from renewables while other
generation still must run due to system
imbalances,” he added.
Noting similar worries, Klingel said,
“We cannot underestimate the im-
portance of underlying infrastructure,
particularly in the transmission and dis-
tribution space. The system upgrades
required to support things like building
electrification, new electric vehicle [EV]
load, and economic development will be
www.powermag.com
critical and many times costly. The timing
of those investments must be balanced
and thoughtful, and I don’t think anyone
has completely cracked the code, or that
there’s a ready-made blueprint,” he said.
Enverus is likewise concerned. Said
Ozkan, “We are particularly concerned
about transmission. The IRA was great
for renewables and carbon-neutral tech-
nology investments in general, but what
was markedly missing was any incentives
for the grid buildout necessary to handle
the changes. The lack of investment in the
grid has been disillusioning for those who
have been looking at the big picture of the
energy evolution and its needs.”
Ozkan noted developers and end-con-
sumers are showing frustration as more
projects become contingent on high in-
terconnection costs and reliability contin-
ues to be an issue on extreme-weather
days. “Currently, it all lives and dies with
the IRA,” he said. “Understanding well
the opportunities to take advantage of
the adders that take the tax credits even
higher will be important.”
Power Market Wild Cards
The evolution of decarbonization strat-
egies is sure to transform the power
system further. Accenture is focused on
three potentially important market driv-
ers. “Among the exciting trends we’re
watching is how fast EV demand can be
met and charging infrastructure can be
rolled out to meet this demand. Another
is how clean hydrogen can be integrated
into power markets. A third is how the
drive for net-zero emissions is requiring
power companies and all stakeholders to
think beyond electricity to envision how
the power market will integrate with eco-
nomic sectors such as natural gas, trans-
portation, water, and waste,” Tinkler said.
Referencing a recent study, Tinkler ex-
plained how a UK vehicle-to-grid charg-
ing infrastructure project (Figure 3) had
enabled more than three million “free”
miles for customers, who had made
money by exporting electricity stored in
their EVs back to the grid at peak times.
“Opportunities like this are extremely ex-
citing,” he said.
“We are at the dawn of a next-gener-
ation power market, one where utilities
will play a prominent role, but requires
an unprecedented level of collaboration
and investment from federal and state
governments, commercial entities, the
financial community, and all of us as cus-
tomers,” concluded Klingel. ■
—Aaron Larson is POWER’s
executive editor.
|
POWER March 2023

When Theory Becomes
Practice, Rely on Practical
Experience as a Foundation
As new energy technologies are employed to solve today’s renewable energy
challenges, think flexibly while relying upon established safety measures.
Una Nowling, PE
“
Is this your first time in the Philip-
pines, ma’am?” asked Maya Shar-
ma, lead field engineer for Surface-
blow & Associates International as she
frowned at the maps app on her phone.
Her phone gave her the equivalent of a
Gallic shrug by replying “No Signal.”
“Nope,” replied Marnie Surfaceblow,
the firm’s vice president. “Had a mix-up
one time with an intern who was handling
travel, and before I knew it, a trip to the
city of brotherly love—meaning, Philadel-
phia,” added Marnie as Maya gave her a
quizzical look, “became a trip to Manila.”
“That is … a most unfortunate mis-
take,” Maya replied, knowing full well
that unusual adventures are common
occurrences for her boss. “Do you know
where this facility is, ma’am? My mobile
does not have any signal.”
Smiling somewhat smugly, Marnie
reached into the laptop bag at her feet
and pulled out a stack of printed pages.
“Always carry a hard-copy map as a
backup when you are going to a new
… oh.” Marnie stared at the pages, and
then pinched the bridge of her nose and
closed her eyes.
“Ma’am?” asked Maya, with a grow-
ing sense of unease.
“Don’t worry Maya, I have an excel-
lent map … to Philadelphia.”
A Biomass-Filled Landscape
After a few wrong turns and some direc-
tions from a kindly roadside fruit vendor,
the jungle-choked road deposited them
at the test site. Sitting in the parking lot,
they had a quick snack and a brief dis-
cussion. Between bites of fresh melon,
Marnie asked her assistant, “I know we
just got back from the Case of the Errant
Hydrogen and hit the road again, so are
you ready for this project?”
“My understanding is this is a test fa-
cility for torrefaction of biomass that was
developed by a research organization
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
MARNIE SURFACEBLOW
1. Marnie and Maya are met by Angelo and Frank as they arrive on-site at the torrefaction facil-
ity. Source: POWER
with almost no practical experience. Lo-
cal contractors are building the system,
but they have never built a torrefaction
facility. They planned on utilizing coconut
waste, but there were supply difficulties.
Thus, they are trying to change the plant
design to use sugar cane waste—ba-
gasse. Based on initial operations, they
have … concerns.”
Marnie snorted a laugh. “Your pen-
chant for understatement strikes again.
Did you see the photos of the fire last
week? Thank goodness no one was hurt,
but they’ve lost a conveyor, a storage
bin, and an old truck that looked like an
antique—the sort of thing Grandpa Mar-
maduke would’ve loved to tinker with.
Now, they’re even further behind in time
and money, and what little product they’ve
made is so far off the mark that …”
“That it might as well be your care-
fully printed map to Philadelphia,” Maya
chimed in quickly, with a rare smirk.
Site Greetings and Discussions
The pair were met by Angelo Garcia and
Frank Ramos, the lead engineer and
plant manager, respectively (Figure 1).
Frank had the look of a CEO who was
visiting the plant for a day trip, but Mar-
nie knew he had extensive operations
experience. Angelo was much younger,
but experienced as well in fuel handling
and preparation systems, although pri-
marily from a coal background.
Marnie and Maya were welcomed
warmly into a conjoined set of mobile
homes repurposed as a long and narrow
engineering office, and met the rest of
the section leaders of the torrefaction
facility. After introductions were made,
and Marnie carefully mixed together cof-
fee with enough milk and sugar to make
pancakes from it, Maya opened the
meeting by inviting the group to “tell us
your story.”
“It’s simple,” Frank began. “We’re a
test site funded by research develop-
ment from four universities to produce
10,000 tonnes per year of torrefied bio-
mass pellets for pulverized coal plants—
mostly located in Luzon. We validated
the process at the bench scale in our
laboratory, and if this scale-up works and
the price is right, we will then increase to
100,000 tonnes within a year. But scal-
ing up and working outside of the labora-
tory has not been good. Our bench-scale
plant was designed for coconut shells
and husks left over from food proces-
sors, and that was our plan for this facil-
ity. But our supplier backed out, so we
found a local bagasse source that can
supply us with feedstock to prove this pi-
lot plant works and our target customer
can perform a test burn.”
29
 MARNIE SURFACEBLOW
“How large was your bench-scale
plant you tested this process with?”
asked Marnie.
“We ran up to 10 kilograms per hour,
and … excuse me Miss Surfaceblow, are
you OK?”
“Do not fear,” answered Maya, “that is
merely the look of utter horror that is a com-
mon expression of my boss. It shall pass.”
Taking a deep breath, Marnie spoke.
“Even with double shifts and assuming
no unplanned outages, I’m thinking your
plant is designed for two to five tonnes
per hour, and on coconut, which is abso-
lutely not the same as bagasse. So, this is
a 200- to 500-to-one scale-up with a differ-
ent feedstock,” she suggested. “And you
thought this was a good idea … why?”
“The process is very simple. We pre-
pare the biomass, apply heat in a low-
oxygen environment for a specific time,
and then we make pellets,” replied a
slightly cross Angelo. “Our graduate stu-
dents did this in our laboratory for two
years with great success. Because our
system is so simple, it was designed to
be very flexible, especially because it is
a pilot plant.”
Leaning in, Maya noted, “But, sir, ac-
cording to your messages, your production
plant may not be as flexible as you wish.”
“It’s true, we have so many problems
we can’t make progress,” replied Angelo.
“Carlos, Marisa, could you please de-
scribe what’s happening?”
Two younger engineers at the end of
the table hooked up a laptop to a projec-
tor and then stepped through slides on
a large monitor. Marisa, the elder of the
two, spoke as Carlos ran the slides. “Prod-
uct quality depends on some factors we
control. As you know, we heat biomass in
a low-oxygen process for a certain time
and certain temperature. Not only does
this remove moisture and some volatiles,
but it transforms the lignin fibers in the
biomass, making it crush just like coal.”
“Not … so much. It does make it more
friable—crushable—but not like coal. Es-
pecially after you add the binders during
the pelletizing process, because they
can be softer and sticky under coal plant
milling conditions.” Marnie shook her
head. “So, tell us why we’re here.”
“Well ma’am, choosing the correct
combination of conditions is very dif-
ficult, and we are constantly searching
for the right combination, but our yield
is less than 20% of what enters. Often,
we make product like this.” A slide was
displayed showing light tan-colored bio-
mass. “Or like this.” Another slide was
displayed showing jet-black and smok-
30
2. The feedstock for the test facility contained sugarcane leaves, stems, and miscellaneous
roots, including dirt clods. Source: POWER
ing biomass. “Rarely do we find a good
balance, so most of our lightly cooked
product is blended with the over-cooked
product,” explained Marisa.
“We sometimes send the less-cooked
biomass through a second time, but
still our yield is very low,” added Carlos.
”Ma’am? Are you unwell?”
“Oh, nothing much, just my brain
hurts. I think I need some fresh air, so
let’s go for a walk,” Marnie said.
A Stroll Through Paradise
The test facility was running, but not very
well. A conveyor laden with sugarcane
leaves, stems, and miscellaneous roots
complete with dirt clods (Figure 2) was
steadily dumping its cargo into a bin with
a large set of vibrating sifting screens at
the bottom. Angelo pointed to the waste
bin, and said, “We try to screen as much
debris as possible, but still dirt goes into
the torrefier. An electromagnet sorts fer-
rous metals, but we rarely find any.”
“What sort of preparation is conduct-
ed on the bagasse?” asked Maya, as
Marnie looked in dismay at the cloud of
dust rising from the sifter.
“It’s delivered by truck, then stocked
into 100 tonne piles,” Angelo replied.
“We don’t cover it, since it already seems
very wet. We chop and grate it, but our
capacity is reduced because the system
was designed for coconut. Everything is
sized to 25 millimeters before going on
the feed belt.”
“That may be so,” Marnie noted,
as she reached out a gloved hand and
snatched a long sugarcane leaf hang-
ing from the conveyor belt. “But, this is
about 25 millimeters by 400 millimeters.
You are only sizing in one axis, so you
have a feedstock that is very inconsis-
tent.” Angelo shrugged. “It’s the best we
can do,” he said.
www.powermag.com
“And sir, what is the moisture content
of the bagasse when you reclaim it?”
Maya asked, taking notes on her tablet.
Angelo shrugged again, which was be-
coming a regular habit. “It is of course
variable. If it is aged and dry, maybe 10%,
if it is new and wet, maybe 60%. It rains
here every two days on average, so there
is that,” Angelo sputtered as he saw the
look on Marnie’s face. Maya cleared her
throat and headed off a pending outburst
by asking, “And what about the quality of
the fuel? Is it from the same plantation
or producer?”
“Yes, it is from one source, and we
receive up to 15 trucks each day.” Angelo
pointed toward five awkwardly arranged
rows of bagasse.
“That pile is on fire,” Marnie comment-
ed resignedly. “I am seeing that, correct?”
Angelo shrugged again. “It is just
spontaneous combustion, from mixing
wet and dry bagasse. It’s not a problem.”
“Except, of course, for the fire that
melted your conveyor,” Marnie retorted.
“Oh, that was in the finished product
area,” replied Angelo. “Come see the
rest of the system.”
“Must we?” asked Marnie before she
received a gentle but firm elbow from
her assistant.
The Finishing Area
The torrefier was a standard rotary type,
looking like a large tumble-dryer. It turned
slowly, and radiated heat and occasional
wisps of steam and smoke. A screw
feeder slowly fed biomass on one side,
while natural gas burners added hot ex-
haust gas to start the drying process. On
the other end, smoking black biomass
char was dumped out, and quenched by
a water mist.
“The drum is specially modified with
an internal spiral liner to turn the biomass
|
POWER March 2023

constantly while moving it toward the
outlet. We control the feed rate, heat in-
put, rotation speed, and oxygen level in
the system. But the ideal control points
always change, and we cannot get the
needed product quality,” Angelo explained.
“How do you dispose of volatiles and
steam released from the process?”
frowned Maya, looking around, then
noticing a vertical pipe with a flame at
the top near the end of the drum. “Oh,
you flare it into the atmosphere, with
no scrubbing and no re-use of the heat.
How unfortunate.”
“Hey,” exclaimed Marnie, “that’s my
phrase!”
“Yes ma’am, and I am using it to good
effect,” Maya replied deadpan.
A Hot Mess
“Your fuel product storage is just … well
… a steaming pile,” said Marnie, watch-
ing the water-quenched biomass char
falling off the outlet conveyor into a heap.
“What are those workers doing near the
end of the torrefier? That’s a pretty haz-
ardous area, I mean, they’re exposed
to hot biomass, potential burns, an ex-
plosion risk, carbon monoxide—please
show me your CO monitors, Angelo.”
Angelo shrugged yet again. “We don’t
have them. This is outdoors, and the
wind surely takes it away before …”
“Imbecile!” exploded Maya, shocking
even Marnie into silence. “It does not
matter where I travel, what the situation,
people are not caring about the safety of
their colleagues! Ammonia, hydrogen,
lost ionizing radiation sources—I have
had enough!” Maya turned and stomped
off, yelling back at a still shocked Marnie
and Angelo, “Ma’am! Sir! Forgiveness
please, I am retrieving our portable gas
tester from our vehicle!”
Angelo started to say something, but
Marnie put a hand on his shoulder in al-
most a motherly gesture. “She knows
what she’s doing. Trust me on this. Get
those workers out of that area, NOW. Then,
let’s examine your biomass feedstock and
torrefied product analysis trends.”
“Um … yes, of course, ma’am.” An-
gelo thought for a second. “Do you wish
to see the pelletizing plant? We have
many pellet consistency problems with
the binders, and the pellet dies last only
half of their expected life.”
“The binders don’t bind, the dies are
dying, and so is your plant. When Cyclone
Maya is done with her testing, let’s have
a meeting and go over the high points.”
Marnie headed back to the engineering
trailers with Angelo in tow. Ten minutes
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
later, sipping her coffee and looking over
laboratory test reports of the feedstock
and product, Marnie was not surprised in
the least to hear loud cursing in Marathi,
followed by the torrefaction system’s
emergency manual trip claxon. “Good
job, my perceptive protégé,” she said
softly to herself.
Setting the Stage for Success
Standing at the front of the meeting
room next to a still-fuming Maya, Marnie
opened the debriefing. “There’s … just a
lot to unpack here. Let me explain why
your simple system is, well, simply dread-
ful. Your laboratory reports were the only
good part. They were comprehensive and
complete. After that, however, your ef-
forts to scale up your bench model by
more than 200 to 1 are just … bad.”
“Allow me to assist,” said Maya. “Ba-
gasse is not coconut. People think coal
quality impacts are difficult to manage
at traditional power stations, but they
are not close in comparison to bio-
mass. And then you add torrefaction?
Torrefaction is not a simple process. It
is, in fact, very complex, and biomass
quality differs from source to source,
dependent upon the soil, how it is har-
vested, the age it’s harvested at, how
it’s stored, everything up to and includ-
ing the phase of the moon. But one of
the simplest factors is what is causing
the greatest problem—feedstock mois-
ture. In the laboratory you performed
some moisture sensitivity analyses
on the coconut shells and husks, but
bagasse has much greater moisture
variability, both inherently and from en-
vironmental factors, such as storing it
uncovered in the rain.”
As Maya shook her head, Marnie took
over. “Even if the dry fuel quality is dif-
ferent, you could greatly improve your
product quality by installing a pre-dryer
upstream of the torrefier. One design
uses a low-temperature drum with humid-
ity sensors to pre-dry the product without
losing your volatile matter or carbonizing
the feedstock. Sure, it costs more, but it
could potentially double your yield,” she
said. “And pretty please, with sugar on
it, cover your biomass piles. Here, again,
your investment will pay off.”
Maya quickly added, “And you must
do what is needed to better remove the
soil, rock, and other materials from the
bagasse before it enters the system. Be-
cause you have not operated long, you
have not seen that these contaminants
can build up inside your torrefier, leading
to increasing unplanned maintenance
MARNIE SURFACEBLOW
and poorer product quality.”
Continuing the foray, Marnie said, “Ba-
gasse and coconut both have low inorgan-
ic content, so adding even small amounts
of dirt and rock will significantly change
your product quality—and you’d better
believe, it’s almost always for the worse.
Also, for goodness’ sake, find a way to
size your product better. You should not
be sending leaves and stems nearly half-
a-meter long into your pelletizer. Which,
by the way, was designed for torrefied
coconut, which can be less abrasive than
bagasse, depending upon the inorganic
minerals within and without it.”
“But, most of all,” Maya returned, in
the intellectual tennis match of the pre-
sentation, “let me ask you this: Do you
hate your employees? Of course not!”
she emphasized, cutting off Frank in
mid-protest. “Then, why do you not have
carbon monoxide sensors at the outlet of
a process predestined to predominantly
produce poisonous pollutants?”
“She’s really mirrored my tendency for
creative alliteration,” thought Marnie, as
Maya continued.
“I measured the CO at the torrefier
outlet area, and found levels from 200 to
more than 600 ppm!” Maya exclaimed.
“That is enough to kill in three hours,
maybe less. Even with shorter exposure
time, workers will have long-term health
effects being in that environment for just
one hour a day!”
The silence in the room spoke vol-
umes, and while Marnie sat in admira-
tion, Maya softened her speech. “There
is a saying from my Auntie Komal that
applies. ‘Making mistakes is common,
accepting mistakes is sacrament, and
learning from mistakes is progress.’
Meaning, take the same academic prob-
lem-solving you used with your tests
on the bench and apply them to fix this
plant, make it safe, make it efficient, and
help your coal power stations reduce
their pollution as well.”
“In other words, folks, when the
real world meets academia, one of two
things can happen: Utter disaster or bril-
liant success,” Marnie supposed. “Let’s
try for option two, shall we?”
As general discussion and debate
broke out, with Maya answering several
pointed questions. Marnie, while pre-
pared to provide backup, simply drank
her coffee and thought, “We did good
work today, so all things considered, I’m
glad we’re not in Philadelphia.” ■
—Una Nowling, PE is an adjunct professor
of mechanical engineering at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City.
31
 FINANCE
Understanding How
Securitization Can Help with
Power Plant Retirements
Power companies across the nation are being pressured to retire fossil-fueled
power plants and transition to cleaner energy resources. But many existing fossil
plants have not been completely paid off or depreciated, which means potentially
big losses to shut them down. A tool called securitization may be able to help
some companies manage the costs.
Aaron Larson
P
ower companies have always had
to plan for the future. They have
always conducted research to
better understanding how load on their
power system might change in the short
and long term, and then, developed a
strategy for meeting that demand. This
is necessary because power plants can
take many years to engineer, procure,
construct, and commission. There are of-
ten land purchases and infrastructure up-
grades required, in addition to permitting
and financing hoops to jump through. It’s
not a quick or easy process.
Furthermore, money spent on power
plants is a long-term investment. Often,
power companies expect the useful life
of plants to be 30 to 50 years or more.
In fact, some nuclear power plants have
now had their licenses extended out to
80 years. It’s unlikely anyone involved
in planning those facilities thought that
would happen when the plants were first
conceived in the 1960s and 1970s.
Prior to pulling the trigger on a proj-
ect, power companies spend a lot of
time evaluating alternatives. These good-
faith efforts lead to what are always
hoped will be smart decisions. Yet, the
landscape is constantly evolving. New
technology and changes in cost curves
for alternative resources can make what
seemed like a great investment in one
decade, much less appealing in the next.
Unfortunately, managers can’t go back
in time and make different choices. The
best they can do is attempt to find the
least-cost way to alter course.
Why Plant Retirement Can Be
Financially Challenging
One of the tools that electric companies
in some states have available to them
is called securitization (Figure 1). “Se-
32
curitization is really just the process of
refinancing an asset, and in effect, re-
structuring that asset into debt,” Brad
Viator, vice president of External Affairs
with the Edison Electric Institute (EEI),
said during a presentation hosted by the
Missouri Energy Initiative.
Viator explained how securitization
works with an example. He suggested
the year was 1990. The local electric
company serving parts of Kansas City is
working with the Missouri Public Service
Commission (MPSC) and leaders are
evaluating if more power generating ca-
pacity is needed to supply the expected
future demand from the growing popula-
tion in and around the metropolitan area.
The company proposes building a 1,000-
MW coal-fired station and financing it for
40 years. The MPSC agrees and the proj-
ect moves forward. The plant will be paid
for and fully depreciated in 2030.
In Viator’s example, the electric com-
pany pays for the resource to be built im-
mediately, in effect, financing that cost to
customers. “They’re pushing these costs
on to customers on a monthly basis, even
though the cost of the asset was paid
up front by the electric company,” he ex-
plained. The electric company is working
much like a bank in this case, with the util-
ity often authorized to receive a return on
equity of from 7% to 9%.
In the first couple of decades after
construction, everything goes smoothly.
The plant operates well and provides
cost-effective power to the region. How-
ever, customer expectations change over
time. People become more climate con-
scious and decide they don’t want coal
plants to be part of the energy future
because of the carbon impact they have.
The problem is, by 2020, with 10 years
remaining in the financing of that asset,
there may still be 60% of the cost of the
www.powermag.com
1. Michigan-based Consumers Energy used
securitization to pay off the remaining balance
it had on its books for D.E. Karn Units 1 and
2. The plant will be retired this year, saving
customers a reported $126 million per year.
Courtesy: America’s Power
asset remaining to be paid back by cus-
tomers. That’s because when you look
at an amortization schedule, most of the
money paid in the first 30 years is interest.
Principal doesn’t exceed interest until year
32 of a 40-year loan. Therefore, to close
this particular plant, the electric company
would need to move the plant from an as-
set to a liability on its balance sheet.
What Is Securitization
One possible way to restructure the fi-
nancing is using the securitization tool, if
the state and PSC allow it. Continuing his
example, Viator explained how securitiza-
tion could be used. “We would restructure
all of the remaining cash flows and create
a debt instrument or a security, and then
we would sell those securities to inves-
tors. So, in fact, that asset gets eliminated
from the electric company’s books that
owned it, and it becomes owned by inves-
tors, who purchased the bonds. And those
bonds are secured by future payments for
the remaining 10 years,” he said.
The bonds are often backed by what
is called the “securitization property,”
which most importantly includes the
rights granted by the commission to col-
lect the bond principal and interest pay-
|
POWER March 2023

ments from customers by charging them
higher electric rates. The charges that ap-
pear on customer bills lead to a stable,
predictable cash flow for bond investors,
making the bonds very low risk. As a re-
sult, the bonds can be sold with low in-
terest rates—generally, much lower than
the return on equity the power company
was getting—and thus the securitization
method becomes a cheap way to finance
the retirement of coal plants and saves
customers money.
A number of states have allowed se-
curitization to be used for disposing of
stranded assets. Among them are Cali-
fornia, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island, and Texas. Colorado, Ha-
waii, Michigan, Montana, and New Mex-
ico have all allowed the tool to be used
“Securitization can be a useful tool, but it’s
not a panacea.”
—Brad Viator, vice president of External Affairs with
the Edison Electric Institute (EEI)
specifically for coal plant retirements
and/or clean energy investments. Sever-
al southeastern states, including Arkan-
sas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
North Carolina, have used securitization
to deal with storm damage costs. Finally,
Idaho, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wis-
consin have used it for some other pur-
poses. Furthermore, there is some type
of regulatory or legislative action being
pursued in several other states to allow
securitization to be used by power com-
panies in some way.
“Securitization can be a useful tool,
but it’s not a panacea,” Viator said. “Se-
curitization as a tool, frankly, is not that
different from bankruptcy—in bankrupt-
ing a particular asset.” The decision to
use securitization is not something pow-
er companies can take lightly. “If you
have a bunch of assets that you want to
securitize and close, that’s going to have
a very material impact on your ability to
raise capital as an electric company go-
ing forward, and it could put companies
in a pretty difficult position,” said Viator.
Four Steps for Success
In another session as part of the event
hosted by the Missouri Energy Initiative,
Ron Lehr, a clean energy consultant and
attorney from Colorado, who was rep-
resenting Energy Innovation Policy and
Technology, a non-partisan energy and
climate policy think tank, suggested
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
there are four pieces in the plant retire-
ment process. The steps include com-
pleting detailed financial analysis, filing a
depreciation and rate case, refinancing,
and reinvesting.
Financial Analysis. Lehr said utilities
spend a lot of time “planning for new
resources and reducing risk,” but what
can be missing in the process is solid fi-
nancial planning. “We would do a better
job—we could create more benefits to
be shared by everybody—if we brought
that financial transition and those issues
forward, and did them upfront and in a
thoughtful and planned way,” he said.
The financial analysis Lehr proposed is
based on corporate financial models
used on Wall Street incorporating pub-
licly available financial data, much of it
filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission and/or the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission.
“It’s a good way to go,” said Lehr.
“Once you set up that financial model,
it can serve you through this whole
process of utility financial transition, by
showing you what the financial options
are and what impact they have, not only
on shareholders but also on consumers.”
Depreciation and Rate Case. There
are a series of dockets, many involving
regulatory agencies, through which re-
tirement decisions must pass in order
to be approved. Consumer advocacy
groups sometimes argue against what
power companies have asked for, and
it’s not a given that money requested for
recovery will be allowed.
“It’s depreciation and rate case that
pick up the questions of disallowance or
partial disallowance or how much time it
takes to get the money back—the depre-
ciation schedule—that’s rate case work,”
Lehr explained.
Refinance. Once decisions are made
on what needs to be paid back, the ques-
tion of how to handle it can be answered.
“Is there a way to refinance it?” asked
Lehr. “That’s where securitized bonds
come in.”
At this point in the process, the eq-
uity on an early-retired plant (the regula-
tory asset) is typically removed from the
books. That’s a hit to shareholders be-
cause securitized bonds reduce invest-
ment costs in rates.
FINANCE
Reinvest. Lehr, who has previously
served as a commissioner and chairman
on the Colorado Public Utilities Commis-
sion, as well as on the Denver Board of
Water Commissioners, suggested utili-
ties should be allowed to refill their rate
base by owning some of the replace-
ment power that comes online to replace
the early-retired plant. “That’s very good
for shareholders,” he said. “It’s very easy
to make a utility whole, and more than
whole, by allowing them to own some,
but not all, of the replacement power.”
Lehr suggested having fair competition
for ownership of the replacement power
was important to ensure the lowest cost
for consumers.
A Win-Win-Win Outcome
Yet, when securitization is the right an-
swer, it can be beneficial in several ways.
“We think that there’s a triple-win out-
come here,” said Lehr.
“Consumers pay less because the
retirement reduces fuel and O&M [oper-
ations and maintenance] costs very sub-
stantially—there are typically hundreds of
millions of dollars here. And the refinance
savings—going from the utility’s autho-
rized rate of return down to the AAA bond
rating—is another big savings. Again, it
can amount to hundreds of millions of dol-
lars, so this is a big deal,” said Lehr.
Environmentally speaking, emissions
are reduced when fossil-fueled plants
are replaced with renewable energy.
There are also opportunities for business
development that come with the addi-
tion of more renewable power.
On the shareholder side, investors can
get higher returns. “You respond to your
investors who want to see utilities mak-
ing this happen,” Lehr said, noting that
Morgan Stanley and BlackRock are two
big investors that have put a lot of pres-
sure on companies to transition toward
clean energy resources. Meanwhile, it
offers a positive response to custom-
ers who are demanding cleaner power.
“There’s a customer preference and cus-
tomer defection issue. That’s a risk for
utilities. You handle that,” said Lehr.
Much like Viator had cautioned, how-
ever, Lehr suggested securitization is
not a one-size-fits-all solution. “Realize
that your circumstances, wherever you
happen to be, are going to be different
and special and unique, and you have to
adapt this stuff to those circumstances,”
he said. “It’s never a case of never or al-
ways, it’s more nuanced than that.” ■
—Aaron Larson is POWER’s
executive editor.
33
 GAS TURBINE
An Unplanned Outage,
an Unconventional Plan,
and a Global Collaboration
When problems strike and normal supply channels are constrained, it can be
advantageous to consider alternatives. The Rocksavage plant in the UK found needed
parts at a station in Argentina and was able to get its unit back online months earlier
than would otherwise have been possible.
Melissa Barber
M
ost power plant operators
would prefer never to face an
unscheduled outage due to a
gas turbine failure. But at InterGen’s
Rocksavage Power Station, a forced
outage in 2022 became an unexpected
opportunity for collaboration.
“With the energy industry under the
microscope, and with potential supply
issues and with the winter months ap-
proaching, at first we didn’t really have
a clear way forward,” said Rocksavage
Engineering Manager Paul Swire.
But the Rocksavage team rallied.
They called on Siraj Taj, principal of
American company ST Power Services
(STP), and other outside expertise and
resources. Together, they decided to
try, in Taj’s words, “a truly innovative
and pragmatic solution that had never
been tried before.” As a result, they re-
turned the plant to full operation in half
the expected time. Here’s how they
did it.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Rocksavage Power Station is a com-
bined cycle natural gas–fired power
plant in England, just southeast of Liver-
pool. It has a generating capacity of 810
MW, enough to power about 800,000
homes.
At 10:36 p.m. on May 21, 2022, Gas
Turbine B (GTB) was nearing the end
of its run cycle. A high-temperature
alarm went off. Four minutes later,
high-temperature alarms sounded fur-
ther down the turbine. Twelve minutes
from the initial alarm, the turbine was
shut down.
Plant operators weren’t too con-
cerned, as GTB had been thoroughly in-
spected four weeks earlier working with
STP. It had gotten a clean bill of health
and had since gone through nine starts
34
with no problems. Searching the Globe for Solutions
“At first, from an operational per- Swire and his team brought in Taj, their
spective, it looked for all the world like trusted consultant, to help them figure
a single-indication issue,” Swire said. out this knotty problem. Taj, who had
Two days later, once the turbine had previously worked for Alstom Power
cooled, Swire’s team used a borescope for nearly 24 years, travels the world
to conduct an internal inspection. They advising power plant owners and man-
discovered significant damage in the agers on how to optimize their power
environmental (EV) combustion sec- generation assets.
tion that would be difficult to fix without “There are solutions,” Taj told them.
opening the machine. “There’s no one answer to the question.
A more detailed borescope inspection We have to ask the right questions—
conducted by the original equipment tough questions, perhaps—then come
manufacturer (OEM) revealed worse up with the answers that are probably
news: the entire bottom half of the EV not industry standard answers, but prac-
combustion section would have to be re- tical answers.”
placed. There was also significant dam- InterGen is an independent power
age across the turbine itself. company whose plants have high levels
The OEM confirmed that it could of autonomy in operational decisions.
manufacture a replacement combus- Therefore, Swire explained, “there’s a
tor. However, the company was already lot of responsibility placed on individual
backlogged from COVID and with exist- sites and individual managers to make
ing commitments to long-term service
agreement customers. Therefore, the
estimated time to provide the new parts
was 46 to 48 weeks. In addition to the
new part lead time, there were challeng-
es in scheduling resources for the work
required for strip-down, replacement, re-
assembly, and commissioning.
There was also the risk of finding fur-
ther significant structural defects once
the GT had been stripped and inspected.
If additional components were damaged,
such as the turbine housing, Swire feared
they’d face another long lead time. It was
imperative to assess the full extent of
the damage.
This, unsurprisingly, “was a very dif-
ficult conversation to have with insur-
ers,” Swire said. Rocksavage was keen
to avoid having its GT out of service for
a year or more. The plant had to be run-
ning at full capacity by the winter, when 1. Damage to the high-pressure blades
demand would spike. Was there an alter- caused by the molten environmental (EV)
combustor material. Courtesy: InterGen
native approach?
www.powermag.com |
POWER March 2023

2. Rotor removal underway as part of the strip and inspect phase. Courtesy: InterGen
things happen.”
The most important thing for the
Rocksavage team to understand, Taj
said, was that “you’re not at the mercy
of somebody else. You can do things. You
just have to reach out to the right people
and evaluate your options.”
That’s exactly what they did. Swire
first contacted Dutch company Thom-
assen Energy about the possibility of
reverse engineering parts for an EV com-
bustor. But when he shared pictures of
the damage (Figure 1), they shook their
heads. Certain parts could be manufac-
tured, but they couldn’t make an entirely
new one. Swire and Taj then wondered,
could they obtain an original combustor?
The particular Alstom GT26 model
used by Rocksavage was one of only
a handful still in use worldwide. Swire
and Taj began following a global trail of
breadcrumbs as they searched for parts.
Swire reached out to Thomassen, which
suggested he speak with SS&A Power
Group in Switzerland, where an engi-
neer connected him with the Dock Sud
power plant in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Swire sent the borescope images to
Dock Sud. Dock Sud sent back photos
of the exact components Rocksavage
needed (Figure 1).
“That was a major breakthrough,”
Swire said, but it was only the beginning.
The parts had been in storage for years,
and in use at Dock Sud before that. Were
they in good condition? Would they fit?
Would they function?
Taj and Swire were aware they were
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
taking a risk. As far as Taj knew, no other
power plant had ever attempted to repair
a gas turbine using original secondhand
parts.
It was a pragmatic decision. With their
combined expertise, they knew they
could adjust, modify, and repair the parts
while ensuring the best standards, clear-
ances, and tolerances. “We are confi-
dent that some things will be right, but
we will deal with the problems as they
come,” Taj told the Rocksavage team.
Parts planning was only one piece of
the puzzle; resource planning and sched-
uling was the other. The people they
needed to assist with the work were
busy with scheduled outages (many of
them deferred because of COVID). The
OEM also played a crucial role, as it pos-
sessed the knowledge and history of the
Dock Sud components and the resources
that would be required. The Rocksavage
team faced a long list of what-ifs—and a
ticking clock.
The Team Leaps into Action
The first order of business was inspect-
ing the spare parts at Dock Sud. Inde-
pendent engineers from SS&A and the
OEM flew to Buenos Aires along with
Chris Bailey, maintenance and reliability
manager for Rocksavage. The team ex-
amined the parts and on first inspection
found no significant mechanical defects.
Most importantly, the components were
compatible with the Rocksavage GTs.
The plan was a go.
Meanwhile, Rocksavage sought to ob-
GAS TURBINE
tain a different part from the OEM’s main
GT store: the plant’s old EV rear wall,
which had been stored there. Swire flew
to Switzerland to inspect it, and the part
was brought to the UK after assessment
and refurbishment. Other parts were
made by third-party manufacturers, ma-
chine shops, and the OEM.
On July 21, a GT24 crew from the
U.S., led by Swiss engineers, arrived at
Rocksavage to strip and inspect the gas
turbine (Figure 2). As they completed
their work in late August, Swire hoped
to keep them in England to assist with
rebuilding the GT. “The worst thing you
want to do,” he said, “is have everyone
leave site with one of your gas turbines
in bits and no real sight on when you’re
going to rebuild it.”
Of course, that’s exactly what hap-
pened. The team had already commit-
ted to returning to the U.S. to work on a
planned outage, so they had left by the
time the parts arrived from Argentina on
Oct. 4. A UK-based crew was found, and
the work of rebuilding began (Figure 2).
“Every day was a raft of on-the-hoof
decisions and ad hoc engineering,” Swire
said. As winter neared, the team pulled
together to get the job done efficiently.
The reassembly was completed Nov. 25.
With excitement and trepidation, they
powered up the turbine. GTB was back
in action—six months ahead of even the
most optimistic original schedule.
Swire’s advice to any plant manager
in a similar situation: Don’t go it alone.
“Reach out to other independent power
service providers, and owners and op-
erators of similar plants and equipment,”
he said. “Engineers always want to as-
sist and love a challenge!” That’s exactly
what Taj does in his consulting work.
“We thrive on being the pragmatic solu-
tion provider,” he said.
The benefits of their approach includ-
ed improved quality, lower costs, and
significant time savings. They demon-
strated that Rocksavage was a reliable
and profitable asset, thus increasing the
chance of future investment in the plant,
including hydrogen fuel upgrades. Rock-
savage returned to full generation capac-
ity just in time to deliver vital energy to
the people of the UK—helping to keep
the lights on during the depths of winter.
To see a slideshow containing many
more images of the damage and replace-
ment parts, see the online version of this
article at powermag.com. ■
—Melissa Barber
(emdashwork@gmail.com)
is a freelance writer.
35
 GAS TURBINE
Protecting Gas Turbines from
High Temperatures, Humidity,
and Dust
Gas turbines require high-quality air to operate reliably. However, increasing
temperatures and reduced rainfall are increasing the frequency of dust storms in
many parts of the world. In these circumstances, air filtration technology plays a
critical role in ensuring satisfactory operation regardless of the ambient conditions.
Tim Nicholas
W
ith the increasing pressure of
more environmentally friendly
energy and the drive to reduce
fuel burn, investments and continual im-
provements are being made to advance
the efficiency of gas turbines (GTs). The
challenge to reduce fuel burn in a gas tur-
bine is being achieved using exotic met-
als and advanced manufacturing tech-
niques to improve aerodynamics and the
throughput of air. These improvements
are compromised by climate changes
that are impacting temperature, humid-
ity, and the types and amounts of par-
ticulates in the air that is fed to the GT.
Olivia Lazard, scholar at Carnegie Eu-
rope, was recently interviewed by the
Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) and said, “Even if we
were to manage to stay at a 1.5-degree-
Celsius increase, the Middle East and the
North African regions would still experi-
ence a substantial rise in temperatures,
which would mean more drought—more
issues around access to water.”
Increasing temperatures and reduced
rainfall are increasing the frequency of
dust storms in the Middle East (Figure
1). In 2016, the United Nations Environ-
ment Programme said Iraq could suffer
300 dust storms a year within a decade.
1. As local environments see less moisture, sand storms similar to this will become more
common. Courtesy: Parker Hannifin
36
A report from the United Nations Gen-
eral Assembly stated: “Sand and dust
storms have become increasingly prob-
lematic in the water-scarce Arab region.
They have expanded in geographical
scope, likely because of climate change
and changing environmental conditions
such as land use and land cover change.”
According to the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), North
America will also experience significant
rises in temperature: “Under all future
scenarios and global warming levels,
temperatures and extreme high tem-
peratures are expected to continue to
increase (virtually certain) with larger
warming in northern subregions.”
Some areas will experience much
higher rainfall and rising temperatures will
mean significant increases in humidity,
as cited by a PNAS (Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences) research
article: “One of the most robust findings
of most if not all climate model studies is
that increase in SAT [surface air tempera-
ture] leads to increase in humidity.”
But what does all this mean for the
performance of high efficiency gas tur-
bines? Whether regions are becoming
hotter and drier, or whether rainfall and
humidity are increasing, these can have
numerous impacts on GTs and the filtra-
www.powermag.com
tion systems that are installed to protect
them, including:
■ Increased humidity promotes corro-
sion and can lead to sudden pressure
spikes if filtration systems protecting
the turbine suddenly become blocked.
■ Filtration systems need to efficiently
handle greater volumes of dust and
sand, which pits and erodes precisely
engineered metal parts in the turbine,
without becoming blocked or requir-
ing unacceptably high levels of main-
tenance or replacement.
■ Higher ambient air temperature has an
inverse relationship with the efficiency
of the GT. As site temperatures rise the
importance of reducing differential pres-
sure (DP) in the inlet house through me-
dia selection becomes more important
to offset the loss of efficiency.
Ultimately, high-efficiency GT com-
pressors require high-quality air to
ensure robust operational behavior.
Therefore, stable and predictable air fil-
tration technologies play a critical role in
ensuring fuel burn remains low regard-
less of changing ambient conditions. But
how can we be sure the GT is protected?
Filtration systems are evolving to meet
extreme demands, but how can we be
sure these systems will operate as ex-
pected when installed?
Tackling Moisture and Humidity
Increases in levels of moisture or humid-
ity can pose several issues for filtration
systems. Tiny water droplets (moisture)
present in fog or mist (Figure 2) can be-
come easily trapped within certain types
of filtration media and mix with dust to
form mud. This can quickly block the
filters, creating large and sometimes
sudden pressure losses in the system.
Moisture also causes quick changes in
|
POWER March 2023

2. Fog events are becoming less predict-
able, requiring year-round moisture mitigation.
Courtesy: Parker Hannifin
the physical state of hygroscopic salt par-
ticles from solid to liquid form, making
them more challenging for the filtration
system to handle.
Coalescers are used to agglomerate
the water droplets to make them larger
and heavier. This prevents moisture and
liquid-phase corrosives from reaching
and then entering the tiny pores in the
GT filter media. A further problem can
come where moisture is present from
mist or fog events and there is high
volumes of dust or sand in the environ-
ment. This can result in the need for
frequent replacement of coalescers.
In such circumstances, the coalescer
needs to be designed to allow dry dust
and sand to pass through while remov-
ing the free moisture. Such technology
is available and will significantly reduce
maintenance overheads.
A further consideration is the type
of media used within the filters. Cheap
blended media swells, reducing the ef-
fectiveness of the filter; whereas, the
selection of a system using advanced
fully synthetic media will help ensure fil-
ter performance, and in turn, GT perfor-
mance, is maintained.
Metal parts of filtration units also need
to be protected from corrosive damage
due to high levels of humidity. Select-
ing filters that use powder coatings on
metal parts of the cartridge will increase
their reliability and resistance to envi-
ronmental factors. Waterproof coatings
using cross-linked materials will further
increase the filter’s resilience to crack-
ing, peeling, chipping, and abrasion.
In addition to upgrading the protection
of the metal, climates that have increased
moisture will need to consider upgrades
in media selection. Sites that historically
used blended media will experience eco-
nomic benefits by upgrading to synthetic
materials that perform well (providing
lower inlet DP and higher GT efficiency) in
higher moisture environments.
|
March 2023 POWER
www.powermag.com
Combating Increasing Dust Levels
High volumes of dust or sand require
multiple stages of filtration using in-
creasingly fine media, which is pleated
into panels to maximize the filtration
area and optimize filtration efficiency. To
protect the GT and ensure smooth ongo-
ing operations, the filters need to handle
the large volumes of dust so that they
remain robust and there is no opportu-
nity for fast-flowing sand and moisture in
the airflow to bypass the filter media and
damage GT internals.
Using polyurethane flow technol-
ogy in the filter construction will ensure
complete encapsulation of the media
pleats and help protect against damage,
through which air can bypass the filter
media. In high-moisture environments,
it may also make sense to use edge
seal technology, which applies continu-
ous hot-melt beads at the border of the
pleats to act as a secondary reinforce-
ment seal against the moisture.
In dusty regions, self-cleaning pulse
systems enable lower differential oper-
ating pressure, which increases the ef-
ficiency of the gas turbine. However, the
pulse settings of these systems need to
be optimized depending upon the location
and prevailing environmental conditions. It
is also crucial that the system is properly
maintained, including the supply of air to it.
Assuring Filter Performance:
Extreme Dust Testing and
Testing Real-World Conditions
Although we recognize the challenges a
changing environment can present on GT
operations, how can we be sure that fil-
tration systems will operate as predicted
once installed on-site? Given the huge
3. In February 2021, an arctic blast hit seven
southern states. Courtesy: Parker Hannifin
GAS TURBINE
volumes of air a GT consumes, even
the smallest change in performance can
make a huge difference to power output
and efficiency.
The volume of air required to test GT
filters makes it difficult to control the
many environmental variables reliably
in a laboratory setting. This can mean
results are at risk of variation according
to the time of year tested and changing
weather conditions in the local environ-
ment from which air is drawn (Figure 3).
The length of test will further determine
how close it is to site conditions as filter
performance changes over time.
The true test of filter lifetime perfor-
mance goes way beyond just filtration
media efficiency. Accurate and reliable
test conditions need to be established
and, if testing does not simulate real-
world conditions, there are no guaran-
tees the filters will perform in the same
way on-site.
Real-world testing, using mobile test
rigs, offers the most assured way to pre-
dict and understand the performance of
a filter. Investing in large test rigs that
can fully simulate sandstorm conditions
over prolonged periods also provides fil-
ter manufacturers with the insights they
need to ensure filters are robust, resil-
ient, reliable, and predictable, as sand,
moisture, and dust levels become in-
creasingly less predictable.
High-Quality Filtration Is Vital to
Success
The ever-changing climate is having an
impact on regional weather trends. The
calculus previously used about local site
conditions doesn’t necessarily apply to cur-
rent site conditions. If we are to maintain
the performance of high-efficiency turbines
over time, we need to ensure filters, media,
and auxiliary systems used to protect them
are optimized for current conditions.
We can no longer rely on stagnant site
analysis at first fire. Said another way, filtra-
tion system recommendations need to be
dynamic and relevant to actual conditions
as opposed to past condition assump-
tions. This is where the expertise of ap-
plication engineering teams needs to be
nimble. They must align and specify filter
systems at sites based on actual weather
conditions, local industry, and inlet house
orientation. It is vital that they stay in touch
with changing weather patterns and chal-
lenge past assumption when making rec-
ommendations on filtration systems. ■
—Tim Nicholas is PowerGen market
manager for Parker Hannifin’s Gas
Turbine Filtration Division.
37
 ADVERTISERS’ INDEX
Page Page
Amarok . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 INNIO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
www.amarok.com www.innio.com

EST Group, Curtiss-Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2 MD&A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

www.cw-estgroup.com www.mdaturbines.com

Explosion Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 United Rentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 4

www.explosionpower.ch/en/ www.unitedrentals.com

FPT Industrial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Zip Cable Tray Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

www.fptindustrial.com www.ziptray.ca

Indeck Power Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

www.indeck.com

PRODUCT SHOWCASE
PRECAST CONCRETE BUILDINGS

TO ADVERTISE IN
BUILT STRONG TO LAST
for POWER Applications easisetbuildings.com
INSTALL IN HOURS, LAST FOR DECADES Contact 540.439.8911
your Sales
Representative
for More Information:

TERRY DAVIS | Eastern U.S./Canada/Latin America

Standard or Custom Designs tdavis@accessintel.com | 404-434-5123
from 8’x12’ to 50’x250’
EasiSetBuildings.com • 540.439.8911
FAST CHRIS HARTNETT | Western U.S./Canada
ECONOMICAL chartnett@accessintel.com | 404-634-5123
VERSATILE
DURABLE
SECURE SCAN FOR A FREE QUOTE! PETRA TRAUTES | Europe
ptrautes@accessintel.com | +49 49 58604760

38 www.powermag.com POWER March 2023 |

Generating connections and commerce to power the industry forward

DISTRIBUTED

CONFERENCE

Save
the Date!
August 14-17, 2023
Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa
Savannah, GA

Experience POWER week is the intimate, solutions-driven

event where electricity generators meet to collaborate
with energy leaders across multiple verticals and
initiate the vision for the future of power generation.

HOST UTILITY SPONSOR

PRESENTED BY

www.experience-power.com
42599
 COMMENTARY
America—and the World—
Needs More Nuclear Power
Jeremy Harrell
N
uclear energy is making a comeback—at home in Amer-
ica and worldwide. The 118th Congress presents new
opportunities to make sure America leads the world on
this crucial clean energy technology. The drumbeat for urgent
climate action on the global stage is as loud as ever, but we’re
also in the midst of a global energy crisis. Both themes exem-
plify the importance and necessity of new nuclear power on
the grid.
Adding Advanced Nuclear Technology to the U.S.
Power System
In the U.S., nuclear utilities are calling for 90 GW of new nucle-
ar power by 2050, nearly doubling our nuclear energy capacity
in the next 30 years—and American entrepreneurs are up to
the challenge. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
anticipates at least 13 applications for advanced reactors by
2027, which puts a dent in the big goal.
The projects in the pipeline today employ thousands of
Americans, and they are just the tip of the spear. If Republi-
cans and Democrats in the new Congress are ready to double
down on the immense nuclear support in the big energy bills
enacted in the past four years—the Energy Act of 2020, the
bipartisan infrastructure bill, the Creating Helpful Incentives
to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act, and the
recent tax package—a new generation of American advanced
reactors will make immense contributions to global security,
U.S. economic growth, and climate action.
The momentum so far has been awe-inspiring. Last year,
Southern Nuclear loaded fuel in the first Westinghouse AP1000
reactor at the Vogtle site in Waynesboro, Georgia. When all
units are operational, the entire Vogtle Plant will be the largest
producer of clean energy in the U.S., powering more than one
million homes and businesses, and employing more than 800
highly paid professionals.
GE Hitachi (GEH), meanwhile, is preparing to build its BWRX-
300 small modular reactor (SMR) in Clinch River, Tennessee,
with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). GEH is hiring 400
employees in Wilmington, North Carolina, to support that proj-
ect, a fuel facility in partnership with TerraPower, and the con-
struction of its SMR at the Darlington site in Canada, which is
on track to operate by 2028.
TerraPower, which is supported by the U.S. Department of
Energy’s flagship Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program
(ARDP), is evaluating up to five additional TerraPower reac-
tors by 2035 with its utility partner PacifiCorp. These projects
would build off TerraPower’s project in Kemmerer, Wyoming,
which is progressing toward late 2020s operation. TerraPower
also closed an $830 million equity raise, one of the largest ad-
vanced fission fundraisers to date.
X-energy broke ground on its advanced reactor fuel facility
in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, this past October. X-energy’s reactor
demonstration, also supported by the ARDP, is slated for the
40 www.powermag.com
late 2020s. The company recently inked a deal with U.S. indus-
trial giant Dow Chemical to decarbonize a facility in Louisiana
using its high-temperature gas reactor.
Policymakers must stay on
offense in the 118th Congress.
Rounding the edges on these
policies will enable Team USA
to out-compete Chinese and
Russian enterprises with
American innovation.
Real Progress Being Made
The global marketplace is noticing, and demand has never been
higher. Increased market opportunities will bring down costs
and drive commercial viability for more American companies.
For example, not more than two weeks after the fuel load
milestone for Southern Nuclear, Poland’s Prime Minister se-
lected Westinghouse as the country’s prime partner for nu-
clear development. The same design being built in Georgia is
expected to provide from 6 GW to 9 GW of nuclear capacity to
Eastern Europe. Several other U.S. designs are nearing deploy-
ment domestically and internally.
NuScale Power, a major American SMR developer, an-
nounced a deal with Romania’s RoPower Nuclear S.A. to build
a six-module, 462-MW facility, as well as partnerships with
Poland and Estonia. At the beginning of January, NuScale
submitted a standard design application (SDA) for its newest
SMR design.
Policymakers must stay on offense in the 118th Congress.
Rounding the edges on these policies will enable Team USA
to out-compete Chinese and Russian enterprises with Ameri-
can innovation. The World Nuclear Association states that, at
the end of October, China was operating 53 commercial pow-
er reactors, making it third in the world after France, which
has 56 reactors. The U.S., leading with 92 operating reactors,
but only has two units under construction, while China has 23
reactors under construction. The U.S. must deploy and export
innovative American nuclear technologies to retain its global
nuclear influence.
With geopolitical threats and the climate challenge both
looming, we cannot cede ground to Russia and China. That’s
why the new Congress must urgently continue moving public
policy that accelerates our domestic nuclear energy industry to
build gigawatts of projects both here and abroad. ■
—Jeremy Harrell is the Chief Strategy Officer at
ClearPath and serves as the chair of the board for
the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council.
|
POWER March 2023
 BRANDCONNECT

Reach your Target Audience with

Content that Resonates with
BrandConnect from POWER

POWER’s BrandConnect allows you to connect directly with the POWER

audience by placing your content alongside relevant POWER editorial
content, maximizing discoverability in context.

You benefit from aligning with the superior editorial expertise and
journalistic integrity of the POWER editorial team. Subscribers rely on the
editors of POWER to deliver industry news, technology fundamentals, and
expert analysis of industry operations and trends. When we connect your
brand to our sophisticated and engaged audience, while associating them
with the leading trends and respected editorial experts, we get results.

CONTACT YOUR SALES REPRESENTATIVE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

ABOUT HOW BRANDCONNECT CAN WORK FOR YOU:

TERRY DAVIS CHRIS HARTNETT PETRA TRAUTES

404-634-5123 713-343-1889 +49 69 58604760
tdavis@accessintel.com chartnett@accessintel.com ptrautes@accessintel.com
 Power projects need a
powerful partner.
From material-handling equipment and aerial-work platforms to backup power
generation and complete tool solutions, we’ve got the equipment you need for your
power project. Planned and unplanned outages, transmission lines or substation
construction projects, we’re there for you.

Our team of experts provide a wide range of Safety, Productivity, Training and Power
& HVAC-engineered solutions, and we have an industry-leading safety rating with an
uncompromising approach to loss prevention and safe behavior. We also always offer
further training solutions through United Academy.

Call 800.UR.RENTS or visit UnitedRentals.com