Background/Objectives

The goal of every energy producer is to provide reliable, resilient, continuous, environmentally friendly, community-friendly, and trouble-free power at an affordable cost with minimal risk. Fulfilling this goal during a massive energy transition to net zero emissions is a difficult task and the risk to both grid stability and economic viability must be mitigated. Grid stability is critical to commerce, health, safety, education, emergency response, and security. The continuous supply of trouble-free power is highly dependent upon maintaining a percentage of rotating generation equipment on the grid. PV Solar and wind do not provide this stability, so hydro, combustion, and steam turbine generators must be maintained on the grid during the transition and must be seen as part of the solution afterwards. Economic viability is critical to both the survival of the utility and the functionality of the community being served. If electricity becomes unreliable or unaffordable, then everyone suffers. The objective is to find a way to propose and demonstrate a means of fulfilling the goal while transitioning for the future.

Approach/Activities

Over the past decade, a plan was devised to protect the future of power generation by making it more flexible, innovative, resilient, secure, modular and transformative. That program today, is called “The 21^st Century Power Plant.” Our team is finishing up a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) study for a 21^st Century Power Plant concept that we call HGCC (DE-FE0031995). It incorporates a synergistic combination of a gas turbine, an ultra-supercritical boiler, carbon capture, energy storage, and controls in a way that is innovative, efficient, modular, resilient, flexible and transformative. The concept is sound and can help the industry transition into the future. The original intent, however, was to design and build new, small plants to replace older, larger plants. This would require (1) both large demolition expenditures and/or the abandonment/stranding of existing assets and (2) the permitting of a new coal-powered plant. Even with carbon capture, a new coal-powered plant would be difficult to build today. The flexibility of this concept is already being tested and is being shown to be viable. The beauty of the HGCC concept is that it is flexible and transformative. If an existing coal plant is found to be viable, the remainder of the modular components can be added to reduce emissions, make the plant more responsive to grid positive and negative loads, and continue to provide necessary rotating generation equipment on the grid to protect it from anomalies. As fuels become more available, natural gas and coal can be removed and replaced or supplemented with hydrogen, biomass, and/or ammonia, making it truly a power plant of the future which can be built today.

Results/Lessons Learned

The FEED study of the HGCC 21^st Century Power Plant is nearly complete. It has been determined that the concept is viable. It can provide reliable, resilient, continuous, environmentally friendly, community-friendly, and trouble-free power. It can also provide the owner/operator with fuel options in the future. Even more intriguing, is the application of the concept to existing facilities in order to also save and utilize assets while maintaining grid stability during the energy/fuel transition period. This presentation will show (1) the HGCC concept as designed for City Water, Power and Light in Springfield IL, (2) how adaptations in fuels will improve emissions, and (3) what would be necessary to determine if the concept can be applied to an existing coal plant.