Gas turbine technology |
Why the renewable build out needs gas firming
If massive amounts of wind and solar are to be added to the grid in the coming years, they need the support of natural gas assets to maintain stability and serve peak demand
Drew Robb
Exuberance about the massive strides made in adding wind and solar to the grid may have led the pendulum to swing a little too far. The previous mayor of Los Angeles, for example, nixed investment in the modernisation of the city’s many natural gas generation assets proclaiming that renewables were the future. That may be so, but his action will probably come to be regarded as a historic blunder. Those assets remain vital to the grid, perhaps even more so today. Yet failure to modernise them means these units will continue, for the foreseeable future, to belch three or four times more emissions than modern gas turbines. Further, some units remain unable to provide the fast-response peaking power that the California Duck Curve requires – rapid fall off of solar power in the late afternoon requiring a lot of natural-gas based plants to come online rapidly to cope with peak demand in the early evening.
But the times they may be a-changing. Utilities in the USA and Australia, among others, are quietly issuing grid modernisation plans that marry huge additions of wind and solar with plans for new power plants or major upgrades to existing gas generation facilities.
No stopping the renewable juggernaut
According to data tracked by Industrial Info Resources (IIR), renewable energy continues to dominate the outlook for US new-build power-generation projects scheduled to begin construction over the 2024-2028 period. “94% of all new-build power generation projects scheduled to begin construction in the United States between January 2024 and December 2028 will be for renewable energy,” said Britt Burt, an analyst at IIR. “Developers plan to build about 482 GW of new generation by 2028.”
There is no question, then, that more renewables are destined to flood onto the grid for some time to come. Most natural gas advocates don’t dispute this. They argue that the wind and solar lobby’s insistence of the entire phase out of gas is ill-advised. In fact, some contend that hissy fits over any natural gas construction, modernisation or pipeline expansion will directly inhibit the goal of achieving a stable renewable-heavy grid.
Mark Axford of Axford Consulting, cites the old adage, “haste makes waste.” He believes not
enough attention is being paid to the price of electricity.
A deafening cry to close down all fossil fuel assets at once, even relatively new ones that have achieved low levels of emissions, drives up cost and makes it appear that renewable generation is more expensive than it us. Utilities sunk millions into these gas assets and calculate the return on their investment over their complete lifecycle. “To declare clean, natural gas plants to be stranded assets before the end of their economic life is wasteful and expensive,” said Axford. “If ratepayers abandon a natural gas generation plant after only 15 years of a 20-year life, the ratepayers are not excused from paying off the remaining five years of construction and capital costs.”
But reliability may be a larger cost in the long run. A more calculated energy transition with supplemental, dispatchable gas generation could stiffen the grid and improve reliability. This is particularly relevant in locations where additional transmission lines are not economically or environmentally feasible, or where it will take years for new transmission lines to be able to carry wind and solar power to load centres.
Older natural gas facilities like this LM6000 facility are being upgraded to lower emissions, provide fast-start peaking power and add stability to the grid. Photo: courtesy of SSS Clutch
26 | November/December 2024|
www.modernpowersystems.com
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