Kolumnentitel
Kolumnentitel
Heat and Power:
­Siemens is building the world’s
most efficient power plant
in Düsseldorf, Germany. It will
break three records and set a new
industry benchmark.
An Efficient
Combination
­s iemens.com/record-
breaking-power-plant
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Text: Moritz Gathmann
50 Living Energy · No. 12 | July 2015
Photo: ­SE 01150696
Highly efficient and flexible combined heat and power
plants open new business cases in terms of ecological
responsibility for industries and suppliers. The waste
heat from gas turbines can be utilized as process steam,
in district heating – or even in district cooling.
or more than 50 years, Düsseldorf’s Rhine harbor was dominated by the twin chimneys of a
coal power plant, 150 and 100 meters
high – landmarks of a city in the
heartland of German heavy industry.
Times are changing, however: Smoking chimneys are no longer a symbol
of progress, and a few years ago, the
stacks were removed. A new landmark
will take their place less than a year
from now: the “Fortuna” block of the
Lausward power plant, its 50-meterhigh chimney encased by a glass shell
that will be illuminated at night.
The new power plant will not only
supply electricity and heat for Düsseldorf’s 500,000 citizens, it will also
epitomize the new identity of the city
as a modern metropolis powered
by cutting-edge technology and driven by a sense of ecological responsibility. Just one example: The city has
committed itself to lowering its CO2
emissions by 10 percent every five
years. “The efficiency of this new combined heat and power (CHP) plant in
terms of electricity and fuel
consumption is exceptional,” says
Udo Brockmeier, Chairman of the
Managing Board at the municipal energy utility Stadtwerke Düsseldorf.
“Today, you can hardly imagine a more
effective power plant to cover the
needs and demands of our city. We are
able to generate and provide sustainable energy and district heating for
Düsseldorf.”
At the heart of the new plant will be a
­Siemens SGT5-8000H gas turbine, one
of the most efficient gas turbines available in the 50- and 60-hertz market.
Living Energy · No. 12 | July 2015 51
u
Combined Heat and Power
Fuel Efficiency
Fuel utilization factor
Combined Heat and Power
+ 40%
fuel utilization
That explains why the German government wants to raise the share
of CHP plants to 25 percent by 2020
and supports their construction with
a range of subsidy instruments.
Another important reason for building a CHP plant in Lausward was public opinion: The inhabitants of nearby
Düsseldorf, located in the most densely populated area of Germany, preferred a gas-fired plant because of its
relatively low emissions, especially
in comparison to coal plants. Gas-fired
CHP plants can reach over 61 percent
net efficiency in condensing mode,
compared to coal-fired plants, which
reach maximum levels of 46 percent.
Full District Heating Mode
830 MW
Electrical Power
520 MW
District Heating
310 MW
Full Condensing Mode
595 MW
Electrical Power
595 MW
CHP Technology for
Industries and Cities
By incorporating a special three-stage
heat extraction design, the efficiency
of the system can be maintained
at high levels throughout the entire
range of heat extraction.
Three World Records
The option of using the low-quality
steam or low-quality heat of gas-fired
power plants is not new, but modern
CHP plants like Lausward are setting
new benchmarks in scale and efficiency: The combined cycle gas turbine
power plant will have an electrical
output of 595 megawatts. That’s a
new record for a combined c­ ycle
block based on a single gas turbine.
The total energy conversion ­efficiency
will exceed 61 percent. That’s also a
­record, surpassing the previous record of 60.75 percent achieved at the
­Siemens-powered combined cycle
52 Living Energy · No. 12 | July 2015
power plant (CCPP) in Irsching,
­ ermany. A third record will be
G
achieved through the extraction of
energy for district heating. Never before has it been possible to extract
310 megawatts of thermal ­energy
from a single gas turbine ­power
plant block in combined cycle
operation.
“Germany is in the middle of an energy transition from fossil and nuclear
energy to renewable resources such as
solar and wind power. This entails a
set of new challenges: During times of
low wind or solar radiation and during
consumption peaks, you need plants
that can be started up fast to compensate,” says Rainer Hauenschild, CEO of
­Siemens Energy Solutions. “The newly
built Lausward plant, for example, can
be started up in less than 40 minutes.”
Nevertheless, many projects for
gas-fired power plants in Germany
were put on hold, because they
are not as profitable as peak power
plants, and now simply serve as a
stopgap for fluctuating renewables.
For the Lausward plant, the earnings
generated by district heating steam
will help to make the plant profitable.
In a recent study1 the renowned German Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced
Materials concludes that CHP accounted for 20 percent of the German heat
market in 2014, and acknowledges the
positive ecological effect: In comparison to “uncombined” power and heat
production, Germany’s CHP plants
already today save 56 million tonnes of
CO2 emissions annually. The analysis
also stresses that the technology is
economical for industries and urban
areas with district heating systems.
Illustration: Pia Bublies
In Full District Heating Mode,
the combined cycle power plant
achieves a 40 percent higher
fuel utilization rate.
CHP plants are on the rise all over the
globe. Having reached an installed
capacity of 50 gigawatts by the end of
2015, experts expect total CHP capacity
worldwide to reach 80 gigawatts in
2022, with the highest growth rates in
the Asia-Pacific region.
­Siemens projects in the Netherlands,
Poland, South Korea, Malaysia, Canada, and Mexico are under way or have
already been built. For instance, the
city of Holland, Michigan, uses waste
heat for its citywide snowmelt s­ ystem,
while Europe’s biggest waste­water
treatment plant in Psyttalia, Greece,
uses it for the cleaning of wastewater. Huge refineries in Malaysia and
Poland have decided to integrate CHP
­ GT5-8000H gas
systems including S
turbines because their needs for both
process steam and power are perfectly met by CHP technology. The cogeneration plant in Malaysia includes
four H-class gas turbines and will
produce 1,220 megawatts of power
and up to 1,480 tonnes per hour of
steam for the Pengerang Integrated
Complex, a refinery built by Malaysia’s national oil company Petronas
in southern Johor. A similar project
is the cogeneration plant in the city
of Plock, Poland, which will produce
596 megawatts of electrical power and
process steam for the refinery of Eastern Europe’s largest oil company PKN
Orlen. “Our success in CHP projects
is due to the experience of our engineering experts. Together with the
“The Ansan power plant and the
partnership with ­Siemens have
proven to be a great success and
a benchmark in the IPP market.”
Sung-Taek Seo, Project Manager, POSCO
major key components manufactured
in-house, that is the basis for highest
operational reliability and flexibility
of power plants,” adds Hauenschild.
In “old” industrial nations like Germany, ­Siemens is mainly replacing older
and less efficient plants. In other
countries like South Korea or Malaysia,
however, the company is building
power and heat supply for newly built
industries and residential districts.
This year, a plant with two SGT6-8000H
gas turbines and an SST6-5000 steam
turbine went online in the South Korean city of Ansan, boasting a capacity
of 834 megawatts and the lowest NOx
emissions of any power plant in
South Korea. Ansan is a fast-growing
industrial city on the west coast of
the Korean peninsula. CHP technology
is an ideal answer to its electricity
and district heating needs. At the same
time, the price for gas – which is only
transported to South Korea as liquefied natural gas – is exceptionally
high, making it even more important
for the customer to use it efficiently.
While an ordinary combined cycle
plant normally reaches a maximum
level of 61 percent electrical net
­efficiency, the CHP plant in Ansan
achieves a fuel utilization factor of
75 percent.
Sung-Taek Seo, Project Manager at
South Korean steelmaker POSCO, explains their choice: “We selected the
H-class gas turbine technology as
well as ­Siemens’ in-house basic engi­
neering and project management
­capabilities in order to construct one
of the most competitive power plants
in Korea. As the results show, the Ansan power plant and the partnership
with S
­ iemens have proven to be a
great success and a benchmark in
the IPP market,” he says. ­Siemens has
sold fifteen SGT6-8000H gas turbines
to South Korea for eight projects totaling over 6.3 gigawatts of installed
CCPP capacity. Five H-class projects
have been completed, while three
projects are still under construction.
District Heating in Winter –
District Cooling in Summer
What do you do with heating energy
during the warmer seasons? A groundbreaking answer to this question has
been found in New York’s Bronx district. The community is served by
a local power plant comprising two
SGT-400 gas turbines and an SST-300
steam turbine. Here, it was the concept of “trigeneration” – not just of
electricity and heating, but notably
also of cooling power – that dovetailed
with the needs of the community.
Besides generating electricity for its
60,000 inhabitants, the Riverbay Co-op
City’s Central Plant supplies them with
heat in winter – and cools them down
during the hot New York summers.
This is possible due to “absorption
chillers,” which basically function as
huge refrigerators: They produce
chilled water by heating two different
substances that are in thermal equilibrium to separation, then reuniting
them through heat removal. The cold
water is pumped through the district
heating system, which thus becomes
1
http://www.ifam.fraunhofer.de/de/Bremen/
Formgebung_Funktionswerkstoffe/Energiesystemanalyse/Projektdetails/KWK-Potenzialstudie.html
Living Energy · No. 12 | July 2015 53
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Combined Heat and Power
The
USA’s Largest Municipally
xxxReport
Owned
Snowmelt System
Typical Michigan winters have 32 days of snowfall, or
up to 177 centimeters per year. The City of Holland
maintains the USA’s largest municipally owned snowmelt system. Pipes running through 46,000 square
meters of roads and sidewalks melt 2.5 centimeters
of snow per hour.
CHP plants are efficient generators
of electricity, but also of steam for
district heating, process steam, or
snowmelt systems.
power stations and local heating
facilities, because less fuel needs to
be consumed to produce the same
amount of useful energy. Reliable and
stable supply of power and heat is
critical for plant operation in many
industries. CHP can increase the re­
liability of power supply, preventing
unscheduled shutdowns of production processes due to grid supply
issues. Plant loads can be adjusted to
suit the customer’s needs; the plant
can operate independently or in parallel with the local electrical grid. A
disturbance or failure to supply the
required process or heating steam
may also lead to production disturbances or stops, often at very high
costs. With a dedicated CHP plant,
users take control of their own heat
and electricity production. Additional
security of supply can be gained by
redundancy and/or backup boilers.
Becoming an Energy Supplier
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a district cooling system. “The idea of
plants producing electricity and cold
water for district cooling systems has
high potential for hot regions of the
world, for instance India or the Middle
Eastern countries,” says Hauenschild.
­Siemens, however, offers solutions not
only for huge refineries or city districts: With its wide range of steam and
54 Living Energy · No. 12 | July 2015
gas turbines, it also has customized
solutions on offer for smaller customers. An individual CHP plant not only
gives factories independence from
local suppliers of power and heat – it
also turns them from consumers of
power into suppliers.
In fact, CHP may play the most important role in distributed energy
Illustration: ­Siemens/i-Pointing ltd
Snowmelt systems prevent the build-up of snow and ice on walkways, patios and roadways. The various types of systems are
distinguished by heat source: electric resistance heat,
geothermal heat, or heat from a combustion source. Thus,
the surplus heat from the circulating water system of a power
plant can be used in a town snowmelt system.
concepts of industrial users. The
advantages of distributed power generation systems are high flexibility
and security of supply, better load
management, and less grid requirements and grid losses. Cogeneration
offers fuel cost savings between 15
and 40 percent compared to separate
supplies of power from conventional
William Grant & Sons is the world’s
fourth-largest producer of Scotch
whisky. As the biggest distiller still
in family ownership, Grant’s has
been making the “water of life” from
grain for nearly 130 years now. Recently, it has also become an electricity supplier.
Prior to the installation of CHP technology at the company’s whisky distillery at Girvan, Scotland, the high
energy demand for both process
steam and electrical power had been
met by large boilers burning heavy
fuel oil and by the local electrical power utility, respectively. These constituted a major and rapidly increasing
percentage of the company’s total
production costs. In 2001, fuel gas
became available for the first time at
the plant, and the distillery decided
to replace the existing boilers with
modern gas-fired units and to generate its own electricity and additional
steam using a modern, clean, and
energy-efficient system.
“The more complex
the systems become,
the greater the need
for flexibility in power
generation.”
Rainer Hauenschild
CEO, ­Siemens Energy Solutions
A package from ­Siemens, based on
the SGT-100 gas turbine, a gas compressor, and a heat recovery steam
generator, now supplies the distillery
with 5.25 megawatts of electricity,
as well as process steam at the rate of
around 11 tonnes per hour. “This
matched our requirements for both
heat and electrical power,” explains
Distillery Manager Conn Lynch. However, besides covering its entire electricity requirements autonomously,
the distillery also feeds around 30 percent of the generated output into the
local grid network as a revenue-earning commodity.
“The global energy market is a rapidly changing arena, and with the rise
of renewable energy sources, it is becoming even more complex, turning
constant availability of power and
grid stability into challenges. The
more complex the systems become,
the greater the need for flexibility
in power generation,” says Rainer
Hauenschild. “All around the globe,
CHP technology is becoming one
of the convincing answers to these
challenges.” p
Moritz Gathmann has been reporting as a
­correspondent from various regions of Europe
for German publications since 2004. His work
has been published in DER SPIEGEL magazine,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and other media.
Living Energy · No. 12 | July 2015 55