Innovation in Global Power - Parsons Brinckerhoff

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GENERATION: Renewables - The Risks, Concerns and Potential The Growing Power of Renewables PB has a strong track record in renewable energy projects, including wind power, geothermal, biomass, hydropower and solar energy. Given the current worldwide concerns about the depletion of fossil fuels and the desire to reduce CO2 emissions, this edition of PB Network takes the opportunity to look at some of the range of projects and studies in which PB engineers get involved. The articles in this section cover a wide spectrum of new and emerging technologies being applied throughout the world. In the first, Dominic Cook taps into PB’s experience across the breadth of power generation technologies to compare the generation costs of traditional and newer generation technologies. This information is key to governments around the world addressing their potential mix of power generation technologies. Then, building on PB’s background and expertise as lenders’ engineers, Ian Burdon describes those processes required in introducing and financing new commercial scale technologies. This topic, too, is key to our understanding of factors that impact our power generation future. Geothermal energy is an important energy source in Australia, and Allan Curtis describes a project in which PB’s design expertise examined different methods of converting this heat source to electrical power. The next article shows PB as EPC contractors rather than consultants, and Roger Lemos describes the design and construction of a gas processing plant in Connecticut. It was designed to collect and process landfill gas, converting a waste gas to a high Btu gas of pipeline quality. Moving to Europe, Rafael Lejarza gives an insight into photovoltaic (PV) power generation and, in particular, PB’s involvement with PV projects in Spain. Finally, Peter Kydd describes briefly a tidal power project on the Severn Estuary in south west England. This set of articles illustrates PB’s breadth of experience ranging from high level studies to designing engineering solutions, all of which will help countries around the world to reduce their carbon footprints. Please see page 89 for a list of many additional articles on windpower, minewater, geothermal, carbon reduction, and other renewable topics from past PB publications. Steve Loyd Chief Thermal Plant Engineer, Newcastle, UK Coordinator of PAN 13, Conventional Thermal Generation PB Network #68 / August 2008 44
http://www.pbworld.com/news_events/publications/network/ Renewables – The Risks, Concerns and Potential Renewable Energy — Sustainable Economy? By Dominic Cook, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, 44 191 226 2203, cookDo@pbworld.com This article is based on a report produced to inform the debate around the future mix of power generation in the UK during the government’s 2006 Energy Review by providing an independent statement of the costs of power generation at that time. It not only reflects the high level of work done by PB’s power specialists, it provides readers with answers to some questions clients around the world contend with. Table 1: Characteristics and costs of technologies studied. 1 These are the estimated engineer/procure/construct (EPC) costs for each technology excluding owners soft costs and contingency. Renewable technologies are at differing stages in their development. Onshore wind generation, for example, is regarded as being virtually competitive in its own right without external support given the right combination of project specifics. This stage of advancement contrasts with those of other renewable energy generation technologies that struggle to break out from the prototyping stage and find convergence on a single implementation model (for example, wave/tidal). The technologies that are considered in this article are: • Coal pulverised fuel • Gas-fired combined cycle gas turbines • Coal IGCC • Nuclear • Onshore wind • Offshore wind • Wave • Tidal. • Biomass This list includes technologies that are available currently and those that are considered to comprise the next generation of renewable generation. They were compared using a discounted cashflow model of the technology capital and operational costs over a typical project life. Long-term gas and coal fuel prices were assumed to be 37 pence/therm and $49/tonne. Whilst there are local cost factors that affect the analysis, the main factor is the relative price for each energy source. Technology Summary The characteristics of the various power generation technologies reviewed are discussed below and summarized in Table 1. Coal pulverised fuel. Conventional pulverised fuel (PF) combustion is a common form of generation technology found throughout the world. It is well proven and considered to be a mature technology. The key design features of a conventional PF plant are the pressure and temperature at which steam is generated. The majority of plants installed to date operate at subcritical steam conditions; however, supercritical and advanced super-critical boilers are becoming the technology of choice for new coal plant construction. A new coal-fired PF plant will have to meet environmental legislation to be considered a “best available technology” and will have to meet environmental legislation through the fitment of emissions control systems. These are important aspects of all types of coal PF plant, and the associated costs can be minimised through the specification of the fuel to be burned. Combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT). In a CCGT power plant, the hot exhaust gases from the gas turbine are delivered to a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) where heat energy in the gases is transferred to water, which is then converted to high-pressure, high-temperature steam. This steam is then delivered to a steam turbine. About two thirds of the electrical power is derived from the gas turbine and one third from the steam turbine. Our study assumed the use of a “state-of-the-art” heavy-duty gas turbine based CCGT because of the high cost of gas fuel and the high level of competition between electricity generators. 45 PB Network #68 / August 2008
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