April 15, 2008

Global Monitor (April 2008)

POWER digest

News items of interest to power industry professionals.

CO₂ capture demo. Basin Electric Power Cooperative and Powerspan Corp. announced the selection of Powerspan’s CO₂ capture technology for a commercial demonstration at Basin Electric’s coal-based electrical generation facility, the Antelope Valley Station located near Beulah, North Dakota. (For more details on the Powerspan CO₂ removal technology, see POWER October 2007, p. 54.)

Approximately one million tons of CO₂ will be captured annually from the 120-MW slipstream project, making this demonstration among the largest in the world. The captured CO₂ will be fed into an existing CO₂ compression and pipeline system owned by Basin Electric’s wholly owned subsidiary, Dakota Gasification Co.

IGCC plant gets regulator nod. Going boldly where some states have feared to tread, the Public Service Commission of West Virginia gave its approval to American Electric Power Co.’s plans to build a 629-MW IGCC coal power plant at the site of AEP’s existing Mountaineer plant near New Haven, W.V.

With the approval, AEP becomes the second utility to have been given the go-ahead by state regulators to build a commercial-scale power plant using IGCC technology that remains commercially unproven for power plant applications.

Duke Energy Corp.’s application to build a 630-MW IGCC plant was approved by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission in November. Both Duke and AEP still need to secure air permits before they can begin construction of their respective projects.

Regulators in other states have balked at IGCC plants because of the technical uncertainties and fears about saddling ratepayers with high development costs.

The AEP project’s cost, now estimated to be about $2.23 billion, has nearly doubled since the Columbus, Ohio–based company announced it in 2004. The heavy cost increases are due to sharp price increases in steel, cement, and other construction necessities—fueled in part by China’s burgeoning economy.

DOE refuses to reconsider corridors. The DOE has refused requests by state and local officials, environmentalists, and affected community groups to reexamine the parameters of its two “national interest electric transmission corridors,” thus clearing the way for utilities to seek federal override of state and local opposition to new power lines located in those DOE- designated areas in the Southwest and Mid-Atlantic.

While acknowledging state and local concerns about federal intervention in power line siting decisions, the DOE said it was carrying out directives from Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which required the department to establish the corridors and granted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “backstop” authority to approve power lines in those corridors that are blocked by state and local officials.

The department also said that in drawing the national interest transmission corridors, it relied on clear evidence that there was transmission congestion in the designated areas and that new power lines were needed to meet growing electricity demand in those energy-constrained regions.

The DOE also rejected a welter of arguments from critics who said that it had failed to consult adequately with states in setting the transmission corridors, as required by Congress; that it violated federal administrative law by failing to provide enough time for public comment on its proposed corridors; that it violated federal environmental review requirements; and that it had relied too heavily on CRA International, a contractor, in assessing transmission congestion (New York officials contended that CRA studies gave too much weight to electric utility industry views).

In what could be a focus of legal challenges to the DOE, the department asserted that it did not have to follow federal administrative procedure because its action on the corridors was an “informal adjudication.” Lawsuits to follow.

Florida blackout caused by engineer error. In what it called preliminary findings of an ongoing investigation into the blackout, Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL) said an engineer working on a switch malfunction at a west Miami substation turned off “two levels of relay protection,” allowing the fault to ripple through the grid, resulting in the loss of power for 2.5 million Floridians in late February.

The company’s announcement appears to answer a key question asked by federal officials and investigators with the North American Electric Reliability Corp.: Why wasn’t the small short-circuit at the substation quickly isolated by protective devices so it did not spread?

“While still preliminary, the results of the investigation so far indicate that human error was the primary factor immediately responsible for the event,” FPL said in a press release.

“A field engineer was diagnosing a switch that had malfunctioned at FPL’s Flagami substation in West Miami,” the utility said. “Without authorization, the engineer disabled two levels of relay protection. This was done contrary to FPL’s standard procedures and established practices. Standard procedures do not permit the simultaneous removal of both levels of protection.

“During the diagnostic process, a fault occurred and, because both levels of relay protection had been removed, caused an outage ultimately affecting 26 transmission lines and 38 substations. One of the substations affected serves three of the generation units at Turkey Point, including a natural gas unit as well as both nuclear units, which, as designed, automatically and safely shut down due to an under-voltage condition. Also affected were two other generation plants in FPL’s system. Total impact to the system was a loss of 3,400 MW of generating capacity.”

H-Engine achieves first firing in Japan. GE Energy’s first commercial H System gas turbine has achieved first firing at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Futtsu Thermal Power Station. Tepco Futtsu is the first commercial site for GE’s most advanced gas turbine combined-cycle system.

Futtsu Thermal Power Station will feature three H Systems, each including GE Energy’s 9H gas turbine along with a steam turbine and generator provided by Toshiba under an agreement with GE. The three combined-cycle blocks will enter commercial operation between 2008 and 2010, with a total output of 1,520 MW.

Futtsu Thermal Power Station is the second location where GE Energy’s H System gas turbine will be in operation. The world’s first 50-Hz 9H combined-cycle system entered service in 2003 at Baglan Bay in South Wales and has surpassed 26,500 operating hours. The first 60-Hz project is the Inland Empire Energy Center in California, scheduled to begin service later this year.

CO2 capture partnership formed. Alstom and The Dow Chemical Co. (Dow) announced a joint development and commercialization agreement for advanced amine scrubbing technology for the removal of CO₂ from low-pressure flue gases particular to fossil fuel–fired power plants and other major industries. The agreement between Alstom and Dow is worldwide and exclusive for the application of this specific technology (see POWER, February 2008, p. 38 for a description of the process).

Under the agreement, Alstom will commercialize and manage the installation of carbon capture solutions using the developed process. Dow, a global gas treatment technology leader, will support Alstom by leveraging its technical capabilities to co-develop an optimized CO₂ capture system.

Panda Energy to build 500-MW plant. Panda Energy Inc. has announced that it intends to build, own, and operate a 500-MW combined-cycle power plant in an industrial-zoned area of the city of Sherman, Texas. The Panda Sherman generating station will be located on a 200-acre site at the Progress Industrial Park. Construction will take approximately 24 months and is dependent upon financing, regulatory approvals, and other conditions. Panda Energy previously announced that it has filed for an air permit to build a 1,000-MW combined-cycle power plant in Temple, Texas.

Peru gets two gas turbines. Siemens Power Generation has awarded Worley- Parsons the engineering phase contract for installation of two SGT6-5000F simple-cycle units in Peru. The first unit is the Simba Project for EnerSur, a subsidiary of Suez Energy International. That project is located in Chilca, 37 miles south of Lima. The second installation is the Kallpa Unit II Project for Kallpa Generacion S.A., where Siemens previously installed a SGT6-5000F unit. The two project sites are less than a mile from each other. Worley-Parsons’ Chattanooga office design team, with support from ARA WorleyParsons in Chile, will complete both projects on an economically structured concurrent basis. The projects are scheduled for completion in July 2008.

Superconducting wire goes live. SuperPower Inc. has reconnected the 350-meter high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cable to the National Grid power system between the Riverside and Menands substations in Albany, N.Y. Using a new 30-meter cable segment fabricated with wire manufactured in Schenectady, SuperPower marked the successful installation and energization of Phase 2 of the HTS Cable Demonstration Project funded by the DOE and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). HTS cables, which carry three to five times more power than the copper-based power cables in use today, can provide an important solution to the ever-increasing demand for more and higher-quality power.

The Albany HTS Cable Project, first installed and energized in July 2006, initially consisted of two sections—a 320-meter-long section connected to another 30 meters long—both fabricated with the so-called first-generation HTS wire. During Phase 2 of this demonstration project, the 30-meter section was removed and replaced during 2007 with an equal section fabricated from SuperPower’s new second-generation (2G) HTS wire.

This is the first in-grid demonstration in the world of a device that incorporates 2G HTS wire, which is expected to provide important performance and price benefits compared with copper wire. HTS cables carry more power more efficiently because they occupy less space than comparably rated conventional cables. HTS cables can be retrofitted into existing underground conduits, eliminating the need for additional trenching, which will be of particular benefit in highly congested urban settings, such as New York City.

The $27 million Albany HTS Cable Project began in 2001 with a $6 million grant from NYSERDA and $13.5 million provided by the DOE. SuperPower; Sumitomo Electric Industries (Osaka, Japan); Linde, formerly known as BOC (Germany); and National Grid (Westborough, Mass.) have all contributed their technical capabilities to this project. SuperPower has managed the project and manufactured the 2G HTS wire; Sumitomo has manufactured and installed the HTS cable systems; and Linde has provided and monitored the cryogenic refrigeration system that is used to cool the HTS cable to –333F.

APS announces world-class-size solar plant. Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) has announced plans for one of the world’s largest solar facilities: a 280-MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant to be built 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, near Gila Bend, Ariz.

The Solana Generating Station will be built by Abengoa Solar Inc. and is scheduled to provide renewable energy beginning in 2011. It will provide APS with more solar electricity per customer than any utility in the U.S. The facility also would be the largest solar power plant in the world if it were in operation today.

APS noted that it chose Abengoa Solar because of its extensive experience constructing, owning, and operating solar power plants. Abengoa Solar deploys CSP technologies across the world, including large-scale facilities under construction or development in the U.S., Spain, Algeria, and Morocco.

Unlike traditional solar-photovoltaic plants, which use direct sunlight to produce electricity, CSP uses the sun’s heat. Parabolic mirrors track the sun and focus solar energy on a heat transfer fluid. Once heated, the liquid converts water into steam, which turns the plant’s turbines to create electricity. This technology allows the plant to produce more energy for customers than a photovoltaic solar power plant, which only produces electricity when its panels are exposed to direct sunlight. (For more information on concentrating solar technology, see POWER, December 2007, p. 40.)

APS also recently announced that it has joined a multi-state consortium of southwestern utilities that have an interest in contracting for a separate 250-MW solar power plant. Should that project proceed to completion, APS customers will receive a portion of the energy from the joint development project, as well as all of the energy from the Solana facility.

Correction

In the February Speaking of Power column, the title for John Hutton’s position in the British government should have been secretary for business, enterprise, and regulatory reform.