POWER digest
News items of interest to power industry professionals.
Detroit Edison selects GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s ESBWR reactor design. Detroit Edison (DTE) announced in mid-June that it has selected GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s next-generation economic simplified boiling water reactor (ESBWR) design for a potential new unit at its existing Fermi 2 Power Plant site on the shore of Lake Erie, 35 miles south of Detroit. (POWER selected Fermi 2 as one of its Top Plants in the remodeled nuclear plant category in 2007.)
DTE had previously notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of its plans to choose the 1,520-MW ESBWR when it submits a combined operating license application (COLA) to the agency in September. Under a recent agreement, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) will provide DTE technical support for its COLA.
DTE joins Dominion Energy’s North Anna, Va., site and Entergy’s (NuStart) Grand Gulf, Miss., site with COL applications on file with the NRC. Entergy’s River Bend, La., and Exelon’s two-unit greenfield project in Victoria County, Texas, are expected to file by year’s end.
DTE is considering building an ESBWR plant to help address the recommendations of Michigan’s 21st Century Energy Plan, which makes clear the state’s need for additional plants over the next two decades to ensure sufficient generating capacity.
“By preparing and submitting a COLA now for a potential ESBWR, we are acting in the best interests of our customers by making sure we are doing everything we can to meet the state’s future energy, environmental and economic needs,” said DTE Chairman and CEO Anthony Earley Jr.
“However,” Earley said, “before we can commit to building a new plant, the Michigan legislature must make changes to the state’s current regulatory structure. A package of bills that would make some of the necessary changes is pending, and we urge the legislature to adopt those measures so that we move forward with this investment in Michigan’s long-term energy future.”
Though submitting a COLA does not commit DTE to build the reactor project, it is necessary for utilities to submit COLAs by Dec. 31, 2008, to be eligible for federal financial incentives included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Earley noted.
The ESBWR plant project could create up to 3,000 temporary construction jobs and up to 700 permanent engineering and other support positions in the state.
Germany cuts solar support. Germany will cut support for the country’s solar energy program—the largest in the world—by 8% in 2009 and 2010 and by 9% in 2011. The cuts were necessary to redirect financial help to other types of renewable energy such as wind and biomass installations, the government said on May 29.
The cuts would affect rooftop panels, which provide a majority of Germany’s solar energy. The decline in support for bigger installations on open fields was larger, starting at 10% next year and falling to 7% and 8% in the following years. The cuts reportedly fell short of those demanded by some German conservatives, who had requested a funding slash of 30% for rooftop solar panels.
As a result of a renewable energy law passed in 2000, Germany has seen a solar energy boom. More than half the world’s photovoltaic energy is produced in Germany, much of it from 300,000 systems on rooftops. Industry sources said that the cuts were bearable because solar energy produced in Germany by 2015 would compete with electricity generated from fossil fuels.
Germany also holds the record for the world’s highest installed wind capacity.
Mesa Power places world’s largest single-site wind turbine purchase order. Mesa Power LLP, a company created by legendary energy executive T. Boone Pickens, has placed an order with General Electric to purchase 667 wind turbines capable of generating 1,000 MW of electricity.
The agreement represents the first phase of the four-phase Pampa Wind Project that will become the world’s largest wind energy project, with a capacity of more than 4,000 MW of electricity. When all phases of the project are completed as projected in 2014, the wind farm will be five times as big as the current largest wind power project in the U.S., with a capacity of 736 MW.
Pickens said he expects that the first phase of the project will cost about $2 billion and that electricity from it will be on-line by early 2011. When complete, the Pampa Wind Project will cover some 400,000 acres in the Texas Panhandle. Pickens said extensive testing has shown that the project area has some of the best wind in the nation.
GE is to deliver the 1.5-MW wind turbines (among the most widely used turbines in their class) in 2010 and 2011.
In August of 2007, Mesa Power filed documents with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to add the 4,000 MW of wind-generated electricity to the power grid in Texas. ERCOT, which operates as part of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, manages the state’s power grid. Mesa Power has nominated its wind turbine output to be delivered by the state’s Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) transmission lines. The CREZ transmission lines will benefit Texas electricity users by delivering cost-effective and reliable electricity generated by renewable energy power projects.
Pickens envisions that large-scale renewable energy projects like his Pampa Wind Project will permit the U.S. to become less dependent on foreign oil. Large-scale renewable energy projects such as this are difficult to execute because they rely upon the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC), which provides incentives for developing renewable energy. However, large-scale renewable energy projects require commitments years in advance, while Congress has only extended the PTC one or two years at a time.
Mesa Power is hopeful that the Pampa Wind Project will qualify for the PTC in 2010 and 2011, when the project will begin commercial operation. “I believe that Congress will recognize that it is critical not only to this project, but to renewable energy in this country, that they enact a long-term extension of the Production Tax Credits,” Pickens said.
DOE formally ends FutureGen participation. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman in mid-June sent a letter to companies involved in the FutureGen Alliance formally withdrawing the Department of Energy’s participation in a $1.5 billion project to build a unique, near-zero-emissions coal-fired power plant in central Illinois.
The DOE’s withdrawal was expected. On January 29, 2008, barely a month after the FutureGen Alliance had announced its long-awaited decision about the location of demonstration plant, the DOE had announced it would pull its funding for the project—mostly due to higher-than-expected costs. (See the first stories in Global Monitor in the February and March 2008 issues of POWER.)
Secretary Bodman had then stated that the FutureGen project would be restructured and that the DOE would “equip multiple new clean-coal power plants with advanced CCS technology, instead of one demonstration plant.”
According to the Associated Press, the DOE now plans to start over while continuing its efforts to pay for several clean-coal projects around the country. The agency is to seek proposals for those projects in the coming weeks, a spokesperson told the AP.
GE-Hitachi Nuclear receives NRC license amendment for Global Laser Enrichment test loop. Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), a subsidiary of GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH), was notified May 12 that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission had approved a license amendment request to operate a test loop for GLE’s next-generation laser enrichment technology.
GLE will use information gained from the test loop to make a final decision on the construction of a commercial facility as early as the beginning of 2009. GLE is currently preparing an NRC license application to build and operate the commercial plant.
The test loop is being built in the nuclear fuel manufacturing facility operated by Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas LLC (GNF-A), which is colocated at GEH’s nuclear energy headquarters site in Wilmington, N.C. At GEH’s request, GNF-A applied to the NRC to amend its nuclear materials facility license so that GLE can perform confirmation testing of the laser enrichment technology.
With facility construction nearly complete, GLE anticipates beginning installation of test loop equipment—such as lasers, gas-handling equipment, and auxiliary systems—in the near future. A primary objective of the test loop is to advance the design of the commercial facility building, equipment, and processes.This involves designing components for the commercial production facility itself, as well as ascertaining the specifications and range of operating parameters needed for equipment to be used in commercial production. As part of this process, UF6 will be enriched in small amounts and then blended back to natural UF6.
GEH has exclusive rights to develop, commercialize, and launch this third-generation uranium enrichment technology on a global basis. Commercial facility licensing activities are under way to support a projected start-up date of 2012. The GLE commercial facility would have a target capacity of between 3.5 and 6 million separative work units.
GEH announced April 30 that it had selected its Wilmington site to host the potential full-scale enrichment facility if it formally decides to proceed with construction of the plant.
Mitsubishi to supply natural gas turbine to E4 Group in Russia. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) will supply the E4 Group—a plant engineering, procurement, and construction company in Russia—with an M701F gas turbine to be used at a new power generation plant of OAO UGK TGK-8 (TGK-8), a regional power producer.
TGK-8 plans to build a 400-MW natural gas-fired turbine combined-cycle (GTCC) power generation plant in the Krasnodar region on the Black Sea coast. The MHI-supplied gas turbine will be the key component of the GTCC plant and is expected to contribute significantly to alleviating the tight local electricity situation.
This will be MHI’s first gas turbine order from Russia.
Alstom to supply wind turbines to Iberdrola. Alstom’s wind subsidiary Ecotecnia announced in May that it had entered into a $466.68 million frame agreement to supply wind turbines with a total capacity of 300 MW to Iberdrola Renewables, marking Alstom’s first large agreement of this kind in wind energy since it acquired Ecotecnia in November 2007. Under the agreement, Alstom will supply Iberdrola Renewables with the turbine models Eco 74, Eco 80, and Eco 80 2.0 over a period of four years.
Eskom selects Black & Veatch to provide project services for new power plant. Black & Veatch has been selected by Eskom, South Africa’s state-owned electric utility, to provide project management and engineering services for a 4,800-MW power generation facility being constructed in South Africa.
Black & Veatch will assist with engineering services and supervising construction of six 800-MW units that will constitute Project Bravo, a 4,800-MW supercritical coal-fired generation facility about 120 miles east of Johannesburg. The units’ design will feature flue gas desulfurization.
Project Bravo is scheduled to be completed in stages, with the first unit coming on-line in 2012 and the final unit in 2015. Project Bravo work for Eskom, the world’s 11th-largest electric utility, is now under way and will ultimately provide needed power for South Africa’s growing economy. The country’s electric supplies are currently constrained, and the supply shortage is affecting industry, including production levels at gold and platinum mining operations.
GE to provide $500 million gas turbine equipment to Saudi plants. GE Energy has signed contracts totaling more than $500 million to supply gas turbines and generators for power plant projects owned by Saudi Electricity Co. (SEC).
In the first agreement, GE Energy received a contract to supply gas turbine generators for the 960-MW expansion of the Rabigh Power Plant in Rabigh City, on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. The project is part of SEC’s initiative to provide additional power to support the region’s economic and population growth.
In addition to the Frame 7EA gas turbines at the Rabigh site, GE’s scope of supply includes Type 7A6 generators, technical advisory services during installation, and spare parts. The EPC contractor for the project is the National Contracting Co. Ltd. of Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
Further expanding its presence in the Middle East’s rapidly growing power industry, GE Energy also has received a contract for gas turbines that will be used by four other power plants owned by SEC.
The GE gas turbines and generators will be manufactured at GE Energy’s facilities in Greenville, S.C., and Schenectady, N.Y., respectively.
Saudi Arabia is one of GE’s key growth regions. GE maintains a workforce of more than 600 employees in the Kingdom and has offices in Jeddah, Riyadh, and the Eastern Province, as well as joint ventures in the fields of energy, healthcare, and appliances.
—Compiled by Sonal Patel.
Email
Comments
Print
Reuse
