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GE Is Speeding Massive Offshore Wind Turbine to Market

July 23, 2019

GE Renewable Energy’s mammoth offshore wind 12-MW Haliade-X turbine is on track for an accelerated commercial launch in 2021, the company said as it unveiled the turbine’s first manufactured components on July 22.

Haliade-X features a 220-meter (m) rotor and a 107-m blade designed by GE subsidiary LM Wind Power. The turbine design also includes digital capabilities. GE says the wind turbine model features a 63% capacity factor—which is “five to seven points above the industry standard.” For GE, scaling up is important. “Each incremental point in capacity factor represents around $ 7 million in revenue for our customers over the life of a wind farm,” it noted. In January, the company said it would install a Haliade-X 12-MW offshore wind prototype in the Netherlands this summer.

On Monday, the company unveiled the first nacelle and said it would be shipped from its production site in Saint-Nazaire, France, to Rotterdam-Maasvlakte in the Netherlands “over the coming weeks.” The components will be installed on the prototype, which is land-based to facilitate testing.…

GE Is Banking on Africa’s Burgeoning Power Market

May 19, 2019

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Sub-Saharan Africa’s power generation capacity is projected to surge 4% annually through 2040, and its current energy mix—which is today dominated by hydro and coal—will likely be more diversified as interest rises in renewables such as solar and wind, General Electric (GE) said in a white paper surveying market opportunities in the region that it released in May.

The region is characterized by a seeming “over-dependence on governments” to resolve an energy dilemma: “Governments are faced with investment, policy and regulatory framework challenges that oftentimes hinder their ability to fulfill the responsibility of providing affordable and reliable power,” the white paper says. However, with increasingly diverse funding from public and private sources, including innovative partnerships with private investors and independent power producers (IPPs), “the current narrative that two out of three people in the region needs access to electricity is expected to change,” it says. Among major trends the white paper highlights are that IPPs and public-private partnerships (PPP) will account for 35% of the region’s installed capacity, excluding South Africa, by 2020.…

Power Market Is Changing — Distributed Energy Gaining Ground [PODCAST]

August 27, 2018

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The power market is changing. It’s being driven more and more by the retail side of the business, according to Roy Palk, Esq., president of New Horizons Consulting. Palk will give a presentation titled “The Rise of Distributed Energy — New Challenges Bring New Opportunities” during the Distributed Energy Conference, which will be held at the Denver Marriott West in Golden, Colorado, October 15–17, 2018.

Palk joined The POWER Podcast to give a brief preview of his talk. He said younger, more-sophisticated and environmentally attuned consumers, as well as commercial and industrial companies that are going green—often following edicts from their boards of directors—are forcing utilities to evolve in order to remain the energy provider for these customers.

The rise of solar and wind power, microgrids, and other distributed energy resources means member-owned cooperatives and large utilities must look at their business models in a new light, focusing on the benefits of leveraging the trend toward distributed generation.

To learn more about the Distributed Energy Conference and to register for the event, visit www.distributedenergyconference.com…

MHPS Tops GE, Siemens in Gas Turbine Market

May 5, 2018

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A report from Barclays Plc said Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) received more than half of all global orders for gas-fueled turbines in the first quarter of 2018, the company’s best-ever performance in a market that has seen traditional gas turbine manufacturers struggle in recent months.

The market report from the London, UK-based multinational investment bank was released May 3. It said Germany-based Siemens AG had 26% of global orders in 1Q2018, with Boston, Mass.-based General Electric (GE)—long the leader in worldwide turbine sales—seeing its share drop to 14%. GE CEO John Flannery, who took the reins of the company last year and immediately set out to restructure its operations, has said GE was slow in recognizing slowing demand for gas-fueled turbines. Flannery has changed the leadership of the company’s struggling Power division and said the group needs a “right-sizing” for market structure, including changes to portfolio, supply chain, and supply base by 2020.

Flannery’s outline for changes came at almost the same time in November 2017 as Siemens announced it would consolidate its power divisions and cut 6,900 jobs.…

More U.S. Coal Units Closing Despite Possible Market Pricing Change

November 22, 2017

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U.S. utilities continue to announce closures of financially troubled and older coal-fired power plants even as government officials work on a bailout plan to keep them operating.

Owners of a coal plant in Montana that has only been online since 2006 informed the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) last week of plans to shutter the facility early next year if they can’t find a buyer. The news comes at the same time Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E-KU) said it would close two long-running coal-fired units at the E.W. Brown Generating Station near Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in February 2019.

The announcements are the latest in a series of closures announced in recent months, including three large coal-fired plants in Texas—two operated by Vistra Energy and another by Luminant, a Vistra subsidiary—that generate about 4.2 GW of electricity, or about 12% of the state’s coal-fired generation capacity. Another large Texas plant, CPS Energy’s 840-MW Deely station in San Antonio, is scheduled to close in 2018.…

Dominion Resources Changes its Name to Reflect Market Evolution

May 15, 2017

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Dominion Resources, one of the nation’s largest power generators, has changed its name and the names of key subsidiaries, including Dominion Virginia Power.

The Richmond, Va.–headquartered company that has a power portfolio of 26.2 GW, sizable transmission assets, as well as natural gas storage systems and pipelines, will now be known as “Dominion Energy.”

The names of Dominion Energy’s three operating segments—through which the company manages its daily operations and that the company uses in its financial reporting to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission—have been also revised. Power Delivery Group, Power Generation Group, and Gas Infrastructure Group will replace Dominion Virginia Power, Dominion Generation, and Dominion Energy, respectively, the company said.

Several customer-facing entities are also seeing name changes. Questar Corp., a gas pipeline, storage, and local distribution company acquired by Dominion last year in a $ 4.4 billion deal, will now be known as the “Dominion Questar Corp.” The company also has a new logo.

The name changes recognize the company’s “focus on the evolving energy marketplace and to unify our brand after last year’s merger with Questar,” said Thomas F.…