Wednesday 28 February 2001

New power plants face lack of turbines Five proposed plants in Alta. have secured scarce gas turbines

Grant Robertson Calgary Herald; Southam Newspapers

A growing thirst for electricity across North America has sparked a surge in proposals for new power plants.

But a key ingredient -- gas turbines -- are in short supply, a situation that is threatening to wreak havoc with planned expansions and new facilities.

Siemens Westinghouse Power Corp., the second-largest maker of gas-fired turbines in the world, has issued a warning that it is one year behind schedule on its delivery of the most sought-after generators of electricity in North America.

But in many cases the backlog could be longer.

"If you want to order turbines now, you'll be waiting until 2004 for delivery," said Scott Gardner, project director for AES Corp. which is planning to complete a 250-megawatt plant near Calgary in 2003.

"We're quite fortunate, we have secured our turbines for Calgary which will be delivered in 2002."

The backlog has plans for eight new natural gas-fired power plants in California in jeopardy.

Five new gas-fired power plants have been proposed in Alberta, including the AES Corp. facility.

While those plants have secured turbine engines to generate electricity, analysts say proposals for new plants could be put on hold due to the shortage.

More projects are being discussed, said Duane Reid-Carlson, a consultant with Optimum Energy Management in Calgary.

"It could have an effect on the number that get proposed," he said.

Despite stockpiling turbine parts, San Jose-based Calpine Corp., which has proposed to build a 250-megawatt gas-fired plant in Alberta has had to curtail its expansion into new markets.

"The turbine lead time (needed) creates a significant barrier to entry in the market," Calpine senior vice-president Ron Walter told reporters last month.

Natural gas is the second largest producer of electricity in the province behind coal, accounting for more than 30 per cent of generation.

Gas-fired plants have been pitched as a quicker solution to the province's power woes because the generators are faster to install and because they do not raise as many environmental concerns.

Gas-fired power plants can be on line in three years, while coal plants can take up to five years to build and license.

The pressure on the North American power supply, which has been drained by more than a decade of economic growth, has also caused a surge in demand for so-called "peaking" power plants.

The small plants are temporary generators fired by natural gas which can be set up in less than a year to provide power during times of peak electricity demand.

Frustrated by a growing appetite for electricity and an inability to get large plants built in a timely fashion, California and New York are both racing to install peaking plants to avoid summer blackouts.

But a report by the California Energy Commission this week to fast-track such plants indicates many are still without turbine engines.

The State has secured sites for 33 peak plants to be set up, but only 14 have secured turbines.

The backlog has spawned a worldwide secondary market for used and unwanted turbines.

Power generation companies looking to set up plants are now looking to Asia and Eastern Europe for turbines that may be salvaged.

AES was able to secure its turbines for Calgary on a cancelled order from another company, said Gardner.

"It's a good situation we've got."

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business1/stories/010228/5010727.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 28, 2001

Answers

I am a turbomachinery design and analysis engineer, with over five year's experience in this product area. Turbines experience high temperature gradients (hot and cool areas close by), causing thermal stress. Thermal stress gets counterintuitively worse with thickness, the opposite of ordinary force-induced stress. Since both thermal and ordinary stresses occur, turbine reliability is a "Scylla vs. Charbydis" type situation; so "overdesigning" is not possible. Thus, turbine design and analysis requires heavy computer use, and good computer network reliability. If the computer network is unreliable, turbine design and analysis work can't get done. This computerized work is required to improve turbine reliability, durability, efficiency, manufacturability, and cost. During the trans-Millennial period, computer network reliability has generally declined, due to Y2K (both the bugs and side effects of remediation.) The result is that engineering work on improving turbine engine designs for better efficiency, manufacturability, cost, and reliability is "bottlenecked" by Y2K. The demand for turbomachinery design analysis engineers is much lower than would be indicated by both the need and the money available (from high product demand and sales.) The market price per hour for "temporary" contract engineers is high, but it is still nevertheless very much a "buyer's market", with more qualified engineers than demand. The reason for this apparant anomaly in the economic law of supply and demand is because the high pay is compensation for much higher Risk of sudden layoff, due to computer failure. Sudden layoff can result in high travel costs being a high portion of, or even exceeding, earnings. The bottom line is that Y2K is causing long term bottlenecks in the very computer intensive work of turbine design, analysis, and manufacturing; aggravating the turbine shortage situation described here.

-- Robert Riggs (rxr.999@worldnet.att.net), March 02, 2001.

Fascinating analyis Robert. I thought this was an important story when I posted it, but I was looking at the aspect that so many politicians keep repeating about new generation coming on line in a fairly short time. Not going to happen.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 02, 2001.