2 ORDERS FOR HA GAS TURBINES
At Power-Gen International, an annual summit of energy-industry professionals held this week in Orlando, Florida, GE announced two orders for HA gas turbines that were booked in the third quarter. The world’s largest and most efficient gas turbine, the HA will soon find itself installed outside Tampa, Florida — where a pair of the machines forms the heart of a project between GE and Tampa Electric, or TECO, to modernize TECO’s Big Bend Power Station — and in Taiwan, where one of the turbines will increase the generation potential of a plant operated by Chiahui Corporation.
Their name is HA, but they’re serious business: Since debuting the HA in 2016, GE has received 83 orders from 35 customers in 16 countries, making the HA the world’s fastest-growing fleet of gas turbines. The machines have logged more than 220,000 hours of service to date and added 19 gigawatts of new capacity globally. The company has also announced significant new milestones in the lives of a couple of already-installed machines: In Pennsylvania and Bahrain, HA units have recently achieved “first fire,” an important step as they prepare to become commercially operational and supply energy to the grid.
GE’s commitment doesn’t end at installation, though. The company, which also provides total life-cycle management for its turbines, whose lifespans stretch into decades, also announced its gas turbines are also taking new steps in Central Europe. Czech out more about that here.
NATURAL GAS FORMS A BRIDGE TO THE FUTURE
As the world confronts the threat of climate change, its energy mix increasingly represents a blend of sources, including renewable “fuels” like solar and wind. But the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, yet we want light at the flick of a switch. So power producers seek out reliable ways to generate electricity that bridges the gap when the sun goes down, and helps supplant more traditional fuels like coal. Enter natural gas: It’ll overtake coal as the No. 1 power generation technology by 2025, according to a new analysis by GE Power, and will continue to hold that position through at least 2040. And as the energy mix changes, says GE, the whole electrical grid will become leaner, cleaner and more flexible.
It’s only natural: More and more, the old hub-and-spoke model of power generation is being joined by a distributed system consisting of both renewables and fossil fuels. Natural gas is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel, and plants fired by it are able to throttle up quickly to meet sudden demand. Gas-fired plants are also quick to install and inexpensive relative to other sources. “As the world moves toward a combination of centralized and distributed resources, while increasing environmental sustainability and lowering the environmental footprint of the energy systems, natural gas generation technologies will serve both as a bridge to the past and the foundation of the future,” GE concludes.
Learn more about the promise of gas-fired generation in a transformed energy landscape here.
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE HA
Though it only debuted in 2016, the HA turbine is the culmination of generations of in-house expertise: It was GE that developed the very first gas turbine for power generation back in 1949. Weighing as much as a fully loaded Boeing 747, the HA has set two world records for efficiency, but there’s more than just bragging rights at stake. “It can save power producers a lot of money,” says John Lammas, chief technology officer for GE Power’s Gas Power Systems business. “We calculated that a 1,000-megawatt power plant using a pair of HA turbines could save $50 million on fuel over 10 years by raising efficiency by 1 percent.”
Trial by fire: The turbines are tested and upgraded at a unique facility in Greenville, South Carolina, where they’re subjected to unholy conditions the likes of which they hopefully won’t experience out there in the world — such as ambient temperatures ranging from minus 37 degrees Celsius to 85 degrees Celsius. Part of what makes the machine so resilient are state-of-the-art design and building techniques, like 3D printing, and next-gen materials such as GE’s ceramic matrix composites. CMCs, which GE spent 30 years developing, allow the machines to operate at temperatures as high as 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit, where most metal alloys grow soft.
Like Bruce Springsteen, the HA is tougher than the rest. Find out more here.
— VIDEO OF THE WEEK —
Quote: GE Reports. Image: Getty Images.
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