7 ms·

How the gas turbine conquered the electric power industry

90 points by jseliger 3y ago

taylodl 3y ago
1. Hydraulic fracking made the pricing of natural gas at pennies per cubic mile 2. A gas turbine can be up and running in days 3. Green washing - it's "clean" energy for some definition of clean, certainly compared to coal I'm exaggerating a bit on points 1 and 2, but the fuel costs are cheap and you can setup a gas turbine plant comparatively quickly compared to a coal or a nuclear power plant. Most people don't care about a gas turbine plant in their backyard, but a coal or nuclear power plant? You're facing a multi-year legal battle that's going to cost you millions of dollars. You have to do environmental impact studies that are going to cost you tens of millions of dollars. There's a lot of complications for how to handle the waste (not just nuclear: coal has SOX, NOX, fly ash and pot ash wastes that you must manage) that cost tens of millions of dollars. A gas turbine is quick, cheap, and easy. Guess which form of electrical power generation is proliferating?
- philipkglass 3y ago
  The article has a lot of interesting details about the history of the gas turbine and its incorporation in electrical power generation. Gas turbines first became common in the late 1980s and the US built hundreds of gigawatts of gas turbine generating capacity between 1990 and 2005. This was back when shale gas production was less than 5% of its current rate [1] and gas was a more expensive fuel. Fast construction speed was an advantage even 30 years ago, and so is the lower number of full time employees needed to operate a CCGT plant vs. equivalent capacity from a nuclear or coal plant. But note that the turbine revolution arrived back when the US was still building coal and nuclear plants. They weren't built just for "green washing" reasons or for avoiding legal battles. [1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/res_epg0_r5302_nus_bcfa.htm https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/res_epg0_r5302_nus_bcfa.htm
- pydry 3y ago
  Also 3. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 and an unbelievable amount gets leaked (especially via fracking).
  - thinkcontext 3y ago
    So much so that from some production areas it can be worse from a ghg perspective than coal.
    - sbierwagen 3y ago
      For a few decades. Methane decays in the atmosphere, while CO2 sticks around for however many centuries until it's physically sequestered.
      - thinkcontext 3y ago
        Over 20 years it traps 84x times as much heat and 28x over 100 years. I believe most EPA calculations use the 100 year timescale. So if there's 4% leakage (there are some fields that exceed this) its worse than coal on 100 year timescale. Its arguable what the correct timescale to consider it is. Personally I think 100 years is too long given methane's potential feedback effects. IE, warming causes methane to be released from Arctic tundra melt causing more warming, etc. And there's also the issue that the higher the concentration of methane in the atmosphere the longer it takes to decay.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - ljf 3y ago
        Methane decays into.... Co2 and water vapour. Both have further green house impacts.
        euroderf 3y ago
        And yet, when there's a big leak, flaring it is the way to go. And if it's an illegal leak, maybe it needs some help to flare.
        ljf 3y ago
        Yes, I agree - I'd rather they flare methane and not just leak it. But I wanted to ensure that people didn't think methane just harmlessly decays away. Water vapour at high altitudes causes green house warming, as does the co2 - so while it isn't as bad once decayed, it isn't harmless.
- rz2k 3y ago
  I grew up 15 miles away from a large natural gas power plant, but could rarely see it. Now that it is long since closed I can see its smokestacks almost every day, and now I also can see the mountain range that used to be perpetually hidden that is 30 miles away. To me those smokestacks serve as a monument to the progress that has been made over the past few decades.
  - noselasd 3y ago
    why are there smoke coming of the plant if it's closed ? I'm not quite following what you're actually meaning to say here
    - gavanm 3y ago
      I suspect rz2k means that when the plant was operating, they couldn’t even see the towers because of the smoke/smog. Now that it is closed, and there is no smoke - they can see not just the towers, they now see a long way behind them as well.
    - matthiasl 3y ago
      There's no smoke coming out. Best guess: you're confused by the word "smokestack". Smokestack is a synonym for chimney. The power station is closed. The chimneys are still there, but there's no smoke coming out of them.
    - ljf 3y ago
      Smokestack is the names for a chimney. He's saying in the past general smoke in the area means he couldn't see the chimneys or beyond, but now the site is decommissioned (and I assume other heavy industries have gone), the air quality is better and he can see from the rhet.
- jgalt212 3y ago
  > Green washing - it's "clean" energy for some definition of clean, certainly compared to coal It's very clean when compared to coal, 50-60% less CO2.
  - Qwertious 3y ago
    CO2 is an irrelevant measurement, what matters is CO2e (CO2-equivalent, i.e. what's the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted, measured in the amount of CO2 needed to match their warming potential). Gas emits a relatively low amount of CO2, but a much higher amount of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas (easily 10x of CO2, 50x as much depending on how exactly you measure it (e.g. methane has a shorter atmospheric lifetime than CO2)). Measuring only CO2 here is pointless.
    - elzbardico 3y ago
      But, natural gas is also a sub product of most oil wells. If you don't use it, it is going to be vented or flared anyway. So, it is better to use it, than not using it right now.
    - jgalt212 3y ago
      so from a global warming perspective, as caused by the greenhouse effect, you are in favor of coal electricity generation of natural gas as the path of least harm? Or are you just arguing semantics?
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      > but a much higher amount of methane Err... no. Natural gas is methane, to a good first approximation, but if your plant is emitting methane, it means your plant is not operating efficiently. Natural gas power plants burn methane, producing CO2 and water. Edit: if you're talking about production leaks, coal mines emit methane, too, and there's not even a token amount of effort to stop it, nor any incentive to do so. With gas production, every cubic meter that leaks is a cubic meter you don't get to sell. Edit #2: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/documents/fastfacts-1990-2019.pdf.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/documents/fa... Note that coal mines are currently the 5th largest methane emitters. However, that would certainly go up a lot if natural gas were replaced with coal. The number 1 methane emitter, by a fair amount, is still "enteric fermentation" (i.e., farts and burps). Not too that this table does not include all the naturally-produced methane resulting from the normal rotting of vegetation and non-domestic animal manure. I would almost bet that exceeds even the enteric fermentation.
flavius29663 3y ago
from the article: > By comparison, France’s much-vaunted nuclear power construction spree accounted for roughly 60 gigawatts of capacity between 1975 and 1990, and China built about 400 gigawatts of solar PV capacity between 2007 and 2022, though today China is building about 100 gigawatts of solar a year. This does not capture the sheer size+speed of the PV revolution. We're at 800GW production of PV panels EACH YEAR. This will increase to 1TW by the end of 2024. For comparison, the whole world fossil fuel electricity capacity is around 5TW. Accounting for a lower capacity factor, solar could provide almost all of the electricity in just 15 years. This is shorter than the life expectancy of solar panels, so prepare yourself for some major disruption. Panels will be cheap as dirt, we'll install them as fences, roofs, sidings, you name it. Electricity during daytime will be free. We'll see some changes to the structure of electrical companies: they will charge a higher subscription to connect to the grid, and much less per KWh. Net metering is obviously going away.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- anoxor 3y ago
  > Electricity during the daytime will be free > Panels will be cheap as dirt If you don’t consider the capital of a panel then sure free / cheap as dirt. Then the sun goes down and the wind doesn’t happen to blow, so you fire up your gas turbine.
  - flavius29663 3y ago
    > If you don’t consider the capital of a panel then sure free / cheap as dirt. That's what I meant, the capital cost is already so low that you could use them as fence panels. They will only get lower with the looming supply glut. Look at this monocrystaline (higher eff) panel in china: 15 cents per watt. There are cheaper ones too: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Haitai-Solar-Panel-Price-420w-High_1600957746223.html?spm=a2700.7724857.0.0.620675fa5c3HhG&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Haitai-Solar-Panel-Pr... A 400W panel will cost 60 dollars and has a size of 1.8mx1.8m. Per square meter that is $18.52 A generic plastic fence panel from lowe's 6ft by 8ft costs $120 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Freedom-Actual-6-ft-x-7-82-ft-Ready-to-Assemble-Emblem-White-Vinyl-Flat-Top-Vinyl-Fence-Panel/4008201 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Freedom-Actual-6-ft-x-7-82-ft-Ready... price per square meter: $26.87
adrian_b 3y ago
Nit pick: The article explains why many years have passed from the development of efficient steam turbines until the development of efficient gas turbines, due to the differences between the Rankine Cycle and the Brayton cycle. Even if the Americans like to name the Joule cycle as the Brayton cycle, the American name does not have any justification. While George B. Brayton has patented his engine in 1872, James Prescott Joule has published already in 1851, 21 years earlier, a scientific paper (“On the Air-Engine”) describing what is named now as the Joule cycle, a.k.a. the Brayton cycle. While the Brayton patent contained very little information, the paper published by Joule was very important and it described in great detail how to design an engine using this thermodynamic cycle and why this is useful. Moreover, in 1859, 13 years before Brayton, William John Macquorn Rankine has published a very influential manual (“A Manual of the Steam Engine and other Prime Movers”), where all the thermodynamic cycles used in engines known at that time were classified, and he already referred to this cycle as Joule’s cycle. Therefore there is no doubt about the priority of the term "Joule cycle" over "Brayton cycle". An interesting fact that is usually not mentioned in most manuals is that at equal maximum temperature and maximum pressure (which are typically limited by the materials used for the engine), the Joule cycle is more efficient than either the Atkinson cycle or the Otto cycle, so the fact that it is the easiest thermodynamic cycle to approximate in a gas turbine is favorable for its efficiency.
- p1mrx 3y ago
  We already named an SI unit after Joule. His legacy will be fine.
  - scratcheee 3y ago
    Einstein already has special relativity, his legacy is safe. let’s give general relativity to someone else who had a similar idea 20 years later. I found the preceding argument more compelling.
    - Retric 3y ago
      By that metric go back to John Barber’s 1791 patent for a gas turbine. Brayton needed to solve actual hard core engineering problems to make the device practical, thus it wasn’t the same idea only similar. There’s little comparison as Brayton was selling commercially viable engines vs writing a paper on a much older idea.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
ggm 3y ago
The story of heat engine efficiency is great. The problem is power generation is about capital investment, distance to consumer and ownership of mines and wells. This is why coal, including brown coal, remains in use at scale. Coal plants are massive sunk cost which fills energy supply simply by existing despite what we want. You wouldn't build new ones unless you have leverage on cheap coal and don't care about the consequence. So Manchin probably wants them. Peaking gas turbines are great compared to coal. They also can fail on the supply commitments. South Australia suffered disconnection from a national grid which forced shut-downs and then found the gas generators contracted to do black start couldn't do it for various logistical reasons. The contracted parties got sued into the ground later. I love that Rolls Royce and Pratt&Whitney supply both this market and others from fundamentally the same technology as flight engineering. Obvious differences to mesh a power take off instead of a turbo fan but it's an RJ11 under the hood (for instance)

90 points by jseliger 3y ago

1. Hydraulic fracking made the pricing of natural gas at pennies per cubic mile 2. A gas turbine can be up and running in days 3. Green washing - it's "clean" energy for some definition of clean, certainly compared to coal I'm exaggerating a bit on points 1 and 2, but the fuel costs are cheap and you can setup a gas turbine plant comparatively quickly compared to a coal or a nuclear power plant. Most people don't care about a gas turbine plant in their backyard, but a coal or nuclear power plant? You're facing a multi-year legal battle that's going to cost you millions of dollars. You have to do environmental impact studies that are going to cost you tens of millions of dollars. There's a lot of complications for how to handle the waste (not just nuclear: coal has SOX, NOX, fly ash and pot ash wastes that you must manage) that cost tens of millions of dollars. A gas turbine is quick, cheap, and easy. Guess which form of electrical power generation is proliferating?

philipkglass 3y ago
The article has a lot of interesting details about the history of the gas turbine and its incorporation in electrical power generation. Gas turbines first became common in the late 1980s and the US built hundreds of gigawatts of gas turbine generating capacity between 1990 and 2005. This was back when shale gas production was less than 5% of its current rate [1] and gas was a more expensive fuel. Fast construction speed was an advantage even 30 years ago, and so is the lower number of full time employees needed to operate a CCGT plant vs. equivalent capacity from a nuclear or coal plant. But note that the turbine revolution arrived back when the US was still building coal and nuclear plants. They weren't built just for "green washing" reasons or for avoiding legal battles. [1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/res_epg0_r5302_nus_bcfa.htm https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/res_epg0_r5302_nus_bcfa.htm
pydry 3y ago
Also 3. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 and an unbelievable amount gets leaked (especially via fracking).
- thinkcontext 3y ago
  So much so that from some production areas it can be worse from a ghg perspective than coal.
  - sbierwagen 3y ago
    For a few decades. Methane decays in the atmosphere, while CO2 sticks around for however many centuries until it's physically sequestered.
    - thinkcontext 3y ago
      Over 20 years it traps 84x times as much heat and 28x over 100 years. I believe most EPA calculations use the 100 year timescale. So if there's 4% leakage (there are some fields that exceed this) its worse than coal on 100 year timescale. Its arguable what the correct timescale to consider it is. Personally I think 100 years is too long given methane's potential feedback effects. IE, warming causes methane to be released from Arctic tundra melt causing more warming, etc. And there's also the issue that the higher the concentration of methane in the atmosphere the longer it takes to decay.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ljf 3y ago
      Methane decays into.... Co2 and water vapour. Both have further green house impacts.
      - euroderf 3y ago
        And yet, when there's a big leak, flaring it is the way to go. And if it's an illegal leak, maybe it needs some help to flare.
        ljf 3y ago
        Yes, I agree - I'd rather they flare methane and not just leak it. But I wanted to ensure that people didn't think methane just harmlessly decays away. Water vapour at high altitudes causes green house warming, as does the co2 - so while it isn't as bad once decayed, it isn't harmless.
rz2k 3y ago
I grew up 15 miles away from a large natural gas power plant, but could rarely see it. Now that it is long since closed I can see its smokestacks almost every day, and now I also can see the mountain range that used to be perpetually hidden that is 30 miles away. To me those smokestacks serve as a monument to the progress that has been made over the past few decades.
- noselasd 3y ago
  why are there smoke coming of the plant if it's closed ? I'm not quite following what you're actually meaning to say here
  - gavanm 3y ago
    I suspect rz2k means that when the plant was operating, they couldn’t even see the towers because of the smoke/smog. Now that it is closed, and there is no smoke - they can see not just the towers, they now see a long way behind them as well.
  - matthiasl 3y ago
    There's no smoke coming out. Best guess: you're confused by the word "smokestack". Smokestack is a synonym for chimney. The power station is closed. The chimneys are still there, but there's no smoke coming out of them.
  - ljf 3y ago
    Smokestack is the names for a chimney. He's saying in the past general smoke in the area means he couldn't see the chimneys or beyond, but now the site is decommissioned (and I assume other heavy industries have gone), the air quality is better and he can see from the rhet.
jgalt212 3y ago
> Green washing - it's "clean" energy for some definition of clean, certainly compared to coal It's very clean when compared to coal, 50-60% less CO2.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  CO2 is an irrelevant measurement, what matters is CO2e (CO2-equivalent, i.e. what's the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted, measured in the amount of CO2 needed to match their warming potential). Gas emits a relatively low amount of CO2, but a much higher amount of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas (easily 10x of CO2, 50x as much depending on how exactly you measure it (e.g. methane has a shorter atmospheric lifetime than CO2)). Measuring only CO2 here is pointless.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    But, natural gas is also a sub product of most oil wells. If you don't use it, it is going to be vented or flared anyway. So, it is better to use it, than not using it right now.
  - jgalt212 3y ago
    so from a global warming perspective, as caused by the greenhouse effect, you are in favor of coal electricity generation of natural gas as the path of least harm? Or are you just arguing semantics?
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > but a much higher amount of methane Err... no. Natural gas is methane, to a good first approximation, but if your plant is emitting methane, it means your plant is not operating efficiently. Natural gas power plants burn methane, producing CO2 and water. Edit: if you're talking about production leaks, coal mines emit methane, too, and there's not even a token amount of effort to stop it, nor any incentive to do so. With gas production, every cubic meter that leaks is a cubic meter you don't get to sell. Edit #2: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/documents/fastfacts-1990-2019.pdf.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-04/documents/fa... Note that coal mines are currently the 5th largest methane emitters. However, that would certainly go up a lot if natural gas were replaced with coal. The number 1 methane emitter, by a fair amount, is still "enteric fermentation" (i.e., farts and burps). Not too that this table does not include all the naturally-produced methane resulting from the normal rotting of vegetation and non-domestic animal manure. I would almost bet that exceeds even the enteric fermentation.

flavius29663 3y ago

from the article: > By comparison, France’s much-vaunted nuclear power construction spree accounted for roughly 60 gigawatts of capacity between 1975 and 1990, and China built about 400 gigawatts of solar PV capacity between 2007 and 2022, though today China is building about 100 gigawatts of solar a year. This does not capture the sheer size+speed of the PV revolution. We're at 800GW production of PV panels EACH YEAR. This will increase to 1TW by the end of 2024. For comparison, the whole world fossil fuel electricity capacity is around 5TW. Accounting for a lower capacity factor, solar could provide almost all of the electricity in just 15 years. This is shorter than the life expectancy of solar panels, so prepare yourself for some major disruption. Panels will be cheap as dirt, we'll install them as fences, roofs, sidings, you name it. Electricity during daytime will be free. We'll see some changes to the structure of electrical companies: they will charge a higher subscription to connect to the grid, and much less per KWh. Net metering is obviously going away.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
anoxor 3y ago
> Electricity during the daytime will be free > Panels will be cheap as dirt If you don’t consider the capital of a panel then sure free / cheap as dirt. Then the sun goes down and the wind doesn’t happen to blow, so you fire up your gas turbine.
- flavius29663 3y ago
  > If you don’t consider the capital of a panel then sure free / cheap as dirt. That's what I meant, the capital cost is already so low that you could use them as fence panels. They will only get lower with the looming supply glut. Look at this monocrystaline (higher eff) panel in china: 15 cents per watt. There are cheaper ones too: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Haitai-Solar-Panel-Price-420w-High_1600957746223.html?spm=a2700.7724857.0.0.620675fa5c3HhG&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Haitai-Solar-Panel-Pr... A 400W panel will cost 60 dollars and has a size of 1.8mx1.8m. Per square meter that is $18.52 A generic plastic fence panel from lowe's 6ft by 8ft costs $120 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Freedom-Actual-6-ft-x-7-82-ft-Ready-to-Assemble-Emblem-White-Vinyl-Flat-Top-Vinyl-Fence-Panel/4008201 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Freedom-Actual-6-ft-x-7-82-ft-Ready... price per square meter: $26.87

adrian_b 3y ago

Nit pick: The article explains why many years have passed from the development of efficient steam turbines until the development of efficient gas turbines, due to the differences between the Rankine Cycle and the Brayton cycle. Even if the Americans like to name the Joule cycle as the Brayton cycle, the American name does not have any justification. While George B. Brayton has patented his engine in 1872, James Prescott Joule has published already in 1851, 21 years earlier, a scientific paper (“On the Air-Engine”) describing what is named now as the Joule cycle, a.k.a. the Brayton cycle. While the Brayton patent contained very little information, the paper published by Joule was very important and it described in great detail how to design an engine using this thermodynamic cycle and why this is useful. Moreover, in 1859, 13 years before Brayton, William John Macquorn Rankine has published a very influential manual (“A Manual of the Steam Engine and other Prime Movers”), where all the thermodynamic cycles used in engines known at that time were classified, and he already referred to this cycle as Joule’s cycle. Therefore there is no doubt about the priority of the term "Joule cycle" over "Brayton cycle". An interesting fact that is usually not mentioned in most manuals is that at equal maximum temperature and maximum pressure (which are typically limited by the materials used for the engine), the Joule cycle is more efficient than either the Atkinson cycle or the Otto cycle, so the fact that it is the easiest thermodynamic cycle to approximate in a gas turbine is favorable for its efficiency.

p1mrx 3y ago
We already named an SI unit after Joule. His legacy will be fine.
- scratcheee 3y ago
  Einstein already has special relativity, his legacy is safe. let’s give general relativity to someone else who had a similar idea 20 years later. I found the preceding argument more compelling.
  - Retric 3y ago
    By that metric go back to John Barber’s 1791 patent for a gas turbine. Brayton needed to solve actual hard core engineering problems to make the device practical, thus it wasn’t the same idea only similar. There’s little comparison as Brayton was selling commercially viable engines vs writing a paper on a much older idea.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

ggm 3y ago

The story of heat engine efficiency is great. The problem is power generation is about capital investment, distance to consumer and ownership of mines and wells. This is why coal, including brown coal, remains in use at scale. Coal plants are massive sunk cost which fills energy supply simply by existing despite what we want. You wouldn't build new ones unless you have leverage on cheap coal and don't care about the consequence. So Manchin probably wants them. Peaking gas turbines are great compared to coal. They also can fail on the supply commitments. South Australia suffered disconnection from a national grid which forced shut-downs and then found the gas generators contracted to do black start couldn't do it for various logistical reasons. The contracted parties got sued into the ground later. I love that Rolls Royce and Pratt&Whitney supply both this market and others from fundamentally the same technology as flight engineering. Obvious differences to mesh a power take off instead of a turbo fan but it's an RJ11 under the hood (for instance)