August 15, 2006

Global Monitor (July/August 2006)

POWERnotes
News items of interest to industry professionals

Supplying PRB units. Babcock & Wilcox Co.

 

Babcock & Wilcox Beijing Co., B&W's joint venture company in China, will fabricate most of the pressure parts. B&W's Diamond Power International Inc. subsidiary will supply the sootblowers. Delivery of materials is scheduled to begin in 2007. The first of the eight units is slated to be on-line in the fall of 2009, with the rest following sequentially through mid-2010.

Russian CHP. In mid-June, Wärtsilä Corp. of Finland was awarded a contract valued at 10 million euros to deliver a 17-MW combined heat and power plant to the city of Eisk in southern Russia by spring of next year. The plant will consist of two Wärtsilä 20V34SG gas engine-driven gensets with heat-recovery systems. It will be the first customized commercially operating pilot power plant optimized by Wärtsilä for Russian municipalities.

Going strong in Europe. In July, Siemens Power Generation (Orlando, Fla.) received an order valued at 450 million euros for an 800-MW turnkey combined-cycle power plant to be sited in Irsching, Germany. The order was placed by Gemeinschaftskraftwerk Irsching GmbH, a joint venture in which E.ON Kraftwerke GmbH of Hanover has a 60% stake. N-ERGIE AG of Nuremberg and Mainova AG of Frankfurt hold the remaining 25% and 15%, respectively.

Siemens PG will be building the new gas-fired plant—to be called Irsching 5—on the site of an existing power station. The company is supplying the gas and steam turbines and their generators, the heat-recovery steam generator (HRSG), and all electrical and control systems. Irsching 5 is scheduled to enter service at the end of 2008.

Also in July, Siemens PG laid the cornerstone of another 800-MW combined-cycle plant it is constructing for E.ON, this one in the northern Italian town of Livorno-Ferraris, between Turin and Milan.

Meanwhile, Siemens is building what will be the largest biomass-fired power plant in the UK. Sited in Lockerbie, Scotland, the plant will be owned and operated by E.ON's UK affiliate.

GE/Iberinco partnership flourishing. Atlanta-based GE Energy is supplying a Frame 9FB gas turbine-generator for the expansion of Riga II, the largest thermal plant in Latvia. The Riga plant supplies hot water for district heating in the capital city as well as electricity used in Latvia and beyond. The lead contractor on the expansion project is Iberinco, the engineering and construction affiliate of the Madrid-based Spanish utility Iberdrola.

The Frame 9FB (Figure 6) will help power a new combined-cycle block that will increase the plant's electrical capacity by 420 MW and its thermal output by 270 MW. The turbine and generator will be manufactured at GE's facilities in Belfort, France, and Schenectady, N.Y., respectively. Both are scheduled to be shipped to Riga in December 2006. The new power block is slated to go on-line in June 2008.

 

 

GE Energy and Iberinco previously worked together on Group III of the Arcos de la Frontera combined-cycle plant in Cádiz, Spain, which went commercial in August 2005. The Arcos project marked the commercial debut of GE's 50-Hz 9FB gas turbine, within a 209FB combined-cycle block. Since then, Iberdrola has chosen the 209FB system for two other new Spanish plants: Escombreras (now under construction in Murcia and expected to enter commercial service this November) and Castellón 4 (north of Valencia).

To be rated at 858 MW, the Castellón plant will use natural gas as its primary fuel and oil as backup. It is expected to achieve a net thermal efficiency of greater than 58%. The scope of GE's contract includes delivery of two Frame 9FBs, one GE D11 steam turbine, three 330H electrical generators, and two HRSGs. The gas turbines will be equipped with GE's advanced 2.6+ dry low-NOx combustion systems, keeping emissions of the pollutant under 25 ppm.

$100 million-plus contract.

Atlanta-based Mitsui Babcock (USA) LLC has been awarded a $100 million contract for the steam generator and auxiliary equipment for the Trimble County 2 power project in Kentucky to be built for Louisville Gas and Electric Co. and Kentucky Utilities by Bechtel Power Corp. The 750-MW pulverized coal-fired facility, on the property of the existing Trimble County plant, will operate at supercritical steam conditions, maximizing its efficiency and reducing its CO2 emissions.

Mitsui Babcock's contract, valued at more than $100 million, will be managed by Bechtel, Trimble 2's engineering/procurement/construction contractor. Work is about to begin on the project, which is scheduled to be finished in 2010.

Barbara Lefebvre, managing director of power projects at Mitsui Babcock, emphasized that the plant, which will burn a blend of subbituminous and bituminous coals, will be equipped with world-class environmental controls. "For example," she said, "the steam generator will be fitted with our advanced low-NOx burners, and its fuel flexibility also will help lower pollutant emissions."

Geothermal bubbling along. According to the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA), its favorite generation technology is booming in the U.S. Completion of the 45 projects now in various stages of development in western states (including Alaska and Hawaii) will nearly double America's installed geothermal power capacity, which was 2,828 MW at the end of 2005.

"New state and federal initiatives to promote geothermal energy are paying off," explained Karl Gawell, GEA's executive director. "State renewable portfolio standards and the federal production tax credit are together driving U.S. geothermal power development."

According to Gawell, the biggest catalyst of the activity was last summer's passage of the Energy Policy Act. EPAct made new geothermal plants eligible for the full federal production tax credit, which previously was available only to wind projects. It also authorized and directed increased funding for research by the Department of Energy and gave the Bureau of Land Management new legal guidance and secure funding to address its backlog of geothermal leases and permits.

Correction

An article in our April 2006 issue ("Steam turbine upgrading: Low-hanging fruit") has a section on p. 36 describing the Unit 3 steam turbine overhaul completed by KeySpan Corp. at its Northport Power Station on Long Island. KeySpan has asked us to provide some amplifying comments.

KeySpan engineers note that the rationale for the overhaul was degraded performance (peak capacity and heat rate) due to internal seal leakage. Before the overhaul, the unit was load-limited by 15 MW, with the main boiler feed pump at maximum speed. We incorrectly stated that the pump is rated at 15 MW.

The article also stated that "main steam temperature also was limited—by increasing hot reheat temperatures and by the steady falloff in first-stage pressures since the unit's last overhaul." Clearly, the falloff in first-stage pressure is directly related to seal leakage, but only indirectly to limiting steam temperatures.

Finally, the post-upgrade performance improvement was noted as "465 Btu/kWh (net)—almost twice the predicted 257 Btu/kWh gain." The performance improvement was indeed 465 Btu/kWh (net), but some 317 Btu/kWh of it was attributed to the turbine, even greater than the predicted 257 Btu/kWh gain from that unit.

(Barberton, Ohio) has been chosen to supply eight identical pairs of supercritical boilers and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems for Powder River Basin coal-fired units that TXU Corp. proposes building in east Texas. The eight boilers, each with a capacity of 858 MW, will be B&W supercritical Spiral Wound Universal Pressure designs. B&W's scope includes the SCRs, boiler pressure parts, and auxiliary equipment such as pulverizers, sootblowers, fans and drives, and flues and ducts.

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