Powering the Great Southern Land
As a result, industries which would previously have drawn on electricity from the grid are increasingly opting to produce their own energy from a variety of fuels via reciprocating engines, gas turbines, fuel cells and wind turbines.
This approach is called Distributed Power.
The increasing prevalence of power generation close to where it’s needed is particularly prevalent in remote communities and industries like agriculture and mining where the cost of connecting to the grid is often prohibitive.
This distributed model brings power generation technologies much closer to the point of use. This can result in significant performance improvements.
In addition to cost savings from lower upfront costs and efficient power generation, distributed power technologies can prove better for the environment, and make it easier to do business from virtually any location.
Change is already underway. GE’s Australian Jenbacher distributor Clarke Energy provides one such example. Clarke Energy was recently contracted by Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, NSW, to design and construct a highly-efficient cogeneration power plant.
The new cogeneration power plant using a GE Jenbacher gas engine is expected to help to reduce the energy the university needs to import from the grid and bring it closer to becoming carbon neutral by 2015.
Distributed power’s share of global capacity additions has almost doubled from 21 percent to 39 percent by 2012. Investment has also increased significantly during this time, up from $30 billion to $150 billion.
By 2020, GE expects approximately 65 percent of global electricity consumption will be located in emerging markets, up from 57 percent. Asian nations will also be an epicentre of growth, which in turn is a big opportunity for Australia acquire expertise in the distributed power to assist its neighbours to make the transition.