Projects order 1,248, 1.6-MW turbines

GE says it has secured more than 1,200 MW of commitments for its 1.6-100 wind turbine. The 750 additional turbines bring the total number of orders and commitments to $2.7 billion and more than 2 GW to date. In August 2011, developers selected the turbine for 10 new projects. In total, 1,248 of the 1.6-100 wind turbine technology will be put into wind farms in North and South America over the next two years.

Launched in May 2011, GE’s 1.6-100 wind turbine is designed for increased performance and is the world’s most efficient wind turbine in its class. With blades and towers that extend 100 m, the 1.6-100 captures additional wind energy.

“The 1.6-100 lets owners develop wind farms in lower wind speed sites that were previously not viable,” says GE VP for renewable energy Victor Abate. The wind turbine offers a 47% increase in swept area over previous megawatt-class models, resulting in a 19% increase in annual energy production at 7.5 m/s. This improvement lets the turbine deliver IEC Type Class II (moderate wind speed) performance while operating in a Type Class III (low-wind) environment.

GE Energy
www.GE.com

OEM to provide wind-service coverage to a wind-farm fleet

Boston-based independent wind energy company, First Wind, has selected GE as its service provider for the company’s fleet of 264 GE wind turbines at eight sites across the United States. The eight-year service agreement expands upon existing contracts with First Wind, and is the first contract to cover an entire fleet of wind turbines signed by GE to date.

GE’s agreement with First Wind will include operations, parts, and on-site support including a maintenance package. First Wind will benefit from GE’s latest offerings, including WindBOOST, a way to increase wind turbine production, Winter Ice Operations Mode, which lets turbines recapture production in colder climates, and a service agreement on wind-turbine drive trains. GE also will provide an availability guarantee at First Wind’s wind sites in Maine, Utah, and Hawaii.

GE Energy
www.ge.com

R&D lab considers 15-MW wind turbine from superconducting magnets

GE Global Research, the technology development arm of GE, says it has begun work on the first phase of a 2-year, $3 million project from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a next generation wind-turbine generator that could support applications in the 10 to 15-MW range. “With the industry’s quest for higher megawatt machines to maximize clean wind power opportunities in the U.S. and around the globe, new technologies will be needed to support larger scale wind platforms,” said Keith Longtin, Wind Technology Leader, GE Global Research. “Applying more than 30 years of experience with superconducting magnets for MRI systems in healthcare, we’re developing a generator technology that will deliver more power while at the same time reducing the cost of wind power.”

“MRI machines use superconducting magnets to make lower cost systems with higher image quality,” Longtin said. “For wind turbines, we want to apply them to generate more wind power at a lower cost of electricity. The applications are different, but the basic technology is the same.”

Today, most conventional wind turbines use a gearbox to increase slow rotor speeds to a higher rpm needed by induction generators. While such drivetrains are effective in today’s wind turbines, they become expensive as they scale to larger wind platforms because of their additional weight and maintenance needs. It may be possible to get additional power from a larger drivetrain, but it comes with an increase in the cost of electricity.

Longtin says the application of superconducting technology could enable significant improvements to the generator and eliminate the gearbox. The keys are in reducing the size and weight of the generator, while dealing with lower shaft speeds and high torque. Superconducting technology allows a lighter weight generator that uses high magnetic fields made possible by superconducting materials and the fact that such a generator needs less steel than a conventional generator.

GE says its superconducting machine will use an architecture and proven cryogenic cooling to improve the reliability of the complete machine. GE’s proposed superconducting machine aims to have twice the torque density of competing technologies and will further reduce dependence on rare-earth materials prevalent in permanent-magnet generators that are finding favor in many modern turbines. The larger potential power levels of these machines, coupled with better energy-conversion efficiency leads to more favorable economies of scale (e.g., fewer towers for a given wind-farm output) that will help reduce the cost of energy produced by wind turbines.

In addition to the next generation wind turbine generator project, GE says its researchers are driving other key technologies that will allows the economic scale-up of wind. A few details include:

• Using lighter, more advanced composite materials for longer blades to improve wind capture without adding so much weight that it increases the cost of power

• More advanced controls, sensors, and condition monitoring algorithms to reduce operating costs, and

• Developing an array of grid integration technologies to feed larger amounts of wind-generated power into the grid. Such equipment focuses on making sure wind turbines are grid-code compliant and provide grid-friendly features to help utilities more reliably manage larger wind power loads.

The generator project will have two phases. Phase I will focus on developing a conceptual design and evaluating the economic, environmental, and commercial factors associated with it. Phase II will explore the potential commercialization of the technology. The Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) will be a key partner with GE on the generator project, helping GE to investigate and mitigate high-risk technology challenges associated with the project.

GE Global Research
www.GE.com/wind

Installation details on a 36-turbine Wisconsin wind farm

According to AWEA,. Q1 2011 alone saw 1,100 MW of new wind-power capacity installed with another 5,600 MW under construction. The Butler Ridge Wind Farm in Mayville, Wis., is adding to these figures. Built on the Niagara escarpment, a ridge that originates in Ontario, Canada, and continues through Wisconsin, the wind farm is comprised of 36, 1.5-MW wind turbines on 80-m towers and a site that measures some five by two miles.

“For maximum wind power, the owners constructed the turbines along a place on the ridge that reaches an elevation of about 1,200 ft,” says Rich Vander Heiden, project manager for Menasha, Wis.-based Faith Technologies. The electrical and specialty systems contractor performed the project’s in-tower wiring and installed the turbine foundation conduits and turbine ground grid.

Foundation conduits and grounding for the project consisted of installing two ground rings with 600 MCM copper, 5-in. power conduits, and 2-in. PVC communication conduits for each tower site, says Vander Heiden.

Foundations were a two-part installation. They included an upper and a lower concrete mat, with requirements for conduits and grounding. While one lower mat was being completed, an upper mat was being poured at another site. Once the routine was established, crews worked out a system so material was sorted out for the next day’s activity.

Project challenges include ground rods that had to be driven 20-ft down. Also, two areas required drilling and blasting to excavate rock to reach a required depth.

“In-tower wiring presented another challenge because it was something Faith Technologies had not previously encountered,” says Vander Heiden. “Worker safety is paramount in our planning. Because of Faith Technologies’ experience with cell towers, we have an in-house instructor on high-tower rescue who certified each climber prior to working on the project. Each day, our safety harnesses and tooling were thoroughly inspected before any climbing,” says Vander Heiden.

The project’s final leg took place once the general contractor assembled the tower sections. At that time, several six-man crews from Faith Technologies lowered power and control cabling from the top section to the down-tower assembly. The company finished its part of the Butler Ridge Wind Farm project on time and without a safety incident.

Faith Technologies
www.faithtechnologies.com

Can software improve the grid?

GE engineers say, yes, and they have done so with the company’s Intelligent Platforms software. Proficy Grid Manager, a range of tested grid optimization software for local utilities, delivers real-time information and analytics to help utilities improve operational reliability and efficiency, and manage a more intelligent, cost-effective grid.

Offering an approach that’s customizable to align to a utility’s required smart grid vision, the grid manager encompasses four modular capabilities including operations management, lifecycle management, load management, and knowledge management. It uses the latest ideas to help utilities reduce system outages, enhance equipment lifecycles, manage customer loads, and digitize standard operating procedures.

“Proficy Grid Manager is an open and layered architecture that connects with a utility’s current systems and applications while providing the flexibility to implement value-added capabilities right on top,” said Bill Pezalla, Global Energy Industry Manager for GE Intelligent Platforms. “It’s also Microsoft-based for easier support and training, cost-effectiveness, and integrated security.”

The company says key portions of Proficy Grid Manager include the:

• Operations Management Dashboard to provide a remote-monitoring capability that lets utilities respond to outages, analyze, and prioritize alarms, and leverage advanced and causal analysis. It delivers actionable information that increases system reliability and decreases restoration time.
• Lifecycle Management delivers alarms and quick diagnosis to events on transmission and distribution equipment, providing information that can reduce downtime caused by equipment failures.
• Load Management provides analytics that leverage next-generation technologies to more effectively predict and balance customer loads—minimizing the impact of peak loads on customer productivity and costs, and limiting utility spending on wholesale supply or new generation resources.
• Knowledge Management improves consistency and ensures that best practices become standard operating procedures. This is an industry-unique offering that electronically manages a utility’s work processes and provides an audit trail for compliance.

To help utilities get started, the developer works with each utility to develop a complimentary customized “Smart Grid Roadmap” — a unique list from other solution providers. The roadmap provides a step-by-step strategy, tailoring the grid manager to meet business needs and achieve each utility’s own vision for its distribution system.

“A key advantage is that a utility can jump straight in at any step and progress from that point,” said Pezalla. “Depending on what smart grid technologies are already in place, the roadmap lets users focus on the areas that provide the best operational performance and cost effectiveness for its utility today while providing a strategic, forward-looking path for the future.”

GE Wind Energy
http://www.ge-ip.com/electric_utilities

 

2.75-103 wind turbine commissioned in the Netherlands

GE’s first 2.75-103 wind turbine recently was commissioned at the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands wind farm in Wieringermeer. The turbine sports electrical uprates and GE’s 50.2 meter proprietary blade design that offers an annual energy production increase of more than 9% at 7.5 m/s over the 2.5-100 machine. Minor electrical changes also allow the up-rating, says the company.

GE’s 2.75-103 uses GE’s 50.2-m blade on a 103-m rotor offers the latest enhancements in aerodynamics and reduced acoustic emissions. The turbine is optimized for IEC* Sb and DIBT WZ2 standards. It is available for 50 and 60 Hz applications with 75, 85 and 98-meter hub heights.

The company’s 2.5 MW series turbine—available globally—is built on the performance, availability, and reliability of the 1.5-MW series platform. Efficient at low wind speeds and suitable for a wide variety of wind sites, this turbine model is being used at the world’s largest projects: CEZ Romania’s Fantanele, which together with Cogealac wind farm will make up Europe’s largest onshore project; and Caithness Energy’s Shepherds Flats wind project, which is under construction in Oregon in the United States.

GE Wind Energy

http://www.ge.com/

A pretty cool power plant from GE

GE has developed what it calls a “first-of-its-kind” power plant. By rapidly ramping up and down in response to fluctuations in wind and solar power, the technology will enable the integration of more renewable resources into the power grid. The FlexEfficiency 50 Combined Cycle Power Plant is rated at 510 MW and offers fuel efficiency greater than 61%. The plant is the result of an investment of more than $500 million in research and development by the company.

While most power plants now offer flexibility or high efficiency, GE says this power plant will deliver an unprecedented combination of both. The company calls this combination of flexibility and efficiency ‘FlexEfficiency,’ which is essential if renewable power is going to cost-effectively integrate into power grids around the world on a large scale.

GE drew from the company’s jet engine expertise to engineer a plant that will ramp up at a rate of more than 50 MW per minute, twice the rate of today’s industry benchmarks. Operational flexibility at these levels will enable utilities to deliver power quickly when it is needed and to ramp down when it is not, balancing the grid cost-effectively and helping to deploy additional renewable power resources like wind and solar. A typical plant will deliver enough energy to power more than 600,000 E.U. homes.

Increasing Renewables with Natural Gas

“As we seek to increase use of renewable energy, the challenge of grid stability sharpens,” says Paul Browning, VP of thermal products for GE Power & Waste. “There is added pressure to achieve higher levels of efficiency and lower emissions for natural gas power plants. The FlexEfficiency 50 plant creates growth opportunity in a new segment for our gas turbines.” He says for years GE has been working to develop technology that can deliver breakthrough efficiency and deal with the challenge of grid variability caused by wind and solar. “The need for combined flexibility and efficiency is even more pressing today as countries around the world establish new emissions standards,” he says.

Steve Bolze, president and CEO of GE Power & Water, notes that much of today’s power generation technology is serving yesterday’s power grid. Institutions and individuals everywhere are looking for cost-effective ways to use solar, wind, and gas energy on a large scale. “But they often assume that renewable energy can simply plug-in to the existing power grid,” he says. “We expect the FlexEfficiency to help take advantage of abundant natural gas while we simultaneously carve a fresh path to accelerate wider adoption of renewable energy, all with less impact on natural resources.”

Sustainability by Design

GE engineers were able to avoid the typical tradeoffs between flexibility and efficiency by approaching the plant design from a total equipment and control systems perspective. The company says the FlexEfficiency 50 plant is designed for flexible operation by integrating a next-generation 9FB Gas Turbine that operates at 50 Hz, which is the power frequency that is most used in countries around the world; a 109D-14 Steam Turbine, which runs on the waste heat produced by the gas turbine; GE’s advanced W28 Generator; a Mark VIe integrated control system that links all of the technologies; and a heat recovery steam generator.

“With global energy demand expected to double by 2030 and electricity generation accounting for 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, utilities and government bodies are taking a hard look at how to produce power more efficiently,” says Ricardo Cordoba, president of GE Energy for Western Europe and North Africa. “This innovation can have a dramatic effect on CO₂ emissions and offers a nimble, efficient and cost-effective way for us to help E.U. countries in their pursuit of 20-20-20 energy goals.”

The International Energy Agency concluded in a report that large shares of variable renewable energy are feasible as long as power systems and markets are properly configured so they can get the best use of their flexible resources.

GE www.ge-energy.com

 

A large OEM with a lot to share

After catching up with GE at the AWEA show, the large OEM has lot of news to share.

For one, the company unveiled its latest model, the 1.6-100, at the show and  has already secured nearly 630 ME of commitments for the turbine they designed for increased performance in areas with lower wind resources. The company says the 1.6-100 is the most efficient wind turbine when taking into account capacity factor in wind class. With blades that extend 100 me—a height of 33 stories—the 1.6-100 has the ability to capture additional energy, making it well suited to a variety of wind farm locations. The turbine also offers a 47% increase in swept area over previous models, resulting in a 19% increase in annual energy production at 7.5 m per second. This allows for the turbine to deliver IEC Type Class II performance while operating in a Type Class III (low wind) environment. GE has been operating a prototype 1.6-100 wind turbine at its Tehachapi, Calif., site since February of 2011.

In addition, three Brazilian companies have selected the 1.6-100 for 256 MW of projects in the country. GE will provide 106 wind turbines to projects developed by Serveng Civilsan, 36 wind turbines to projects developed by Bioenergy and 18 wind turbines to projects developed by Oleoplan for a total of 160 turbines to be delivered in 2012.

The company has also expanded its wind services portfolio to include production based availability (PBA) guarantees as an option for new and existing operations and maintenance contracts on all GE 1.5 and 2.5-MW series wind turbines. Available later this year, GE’s production guarantees have been designed with the goals of its customers in mind; ensuring that wind turbines are available during the high wind periods which can be the most profitable for turbine owners.

The company says in 2010, their North American 1.5-MW wind turbines achieved 98.6% fleet-wide time-based availability, with a global average of more than 98%. Wind turbine availability is an important measurement of how well a wind farm is operating and is representative of the amount of time a turbine is able to produce power. GE’s PBA guarantee takes into consideration availability, while at the same time balancing peak production on turbines wind-farm wide. While keeping time-based availability high will continue to be important, factoring in key performance trends gives GE’s wind services team a better perspective on how to best operate a site.

Lastly, as if that’s not enough, work on the world’s largest wind project is well under way as the first wind turbines have arrived at the Shepherds Flat site in Oregon. More than 200 GE wind turbines are expected to arrive at the site before the end of this year, with the remaining units to be shipped in 2012. Shepherds Flat will be the first project in the United States to use GE’s 2.5-100 wind turbines, which have logged more than 2.3 million operating hours in Europe and Asia.

Stretching across 30 square miles of north-central Oregon, the Shepherds Flat project will include 338 GE 2.5-100 wind turbines and will have a total capacity of 845 MW, enough clean energy for 235,000 households. When completed in 2012, Shepherds Flat will be larger than any wind farm currently in operation in the United States. Some of the largest components for the Shepherds Flat 2.5-100 wind turbines, including the machine heads and hubs, are being built at GE’s Pensacola, Fla., and Tehachapi, Calif., facilities. The first hubs for the project came off the line in Tehachapi in February, while production of machine heads began in Pensacola earlier this year.

The Shepherds Flat wind farm is owned by developer and managing member Caithness Energy, along with GE Energy Financial Services, Google and subsidiaries of ITOCHU Corporation and Sumitomo Corporation. Total project value is approximately $2 billion. The wind farm has put in place three 20-year power purchase agreements with Southern California Edison, helping California meet its renewable energy goals.

GE www.ge.com

 

 

 

Wind turbines to make 6 million gallons of ice cream and more

Maker of the nation’s fourth largest-selling premium ice cream says it will receive a quarter of its annual electricity needs from a new wind-turbine-power project at neighboring Frey Farm on Turkey Hill along the banks of the Susquehanna River. All power generated by the twin General Electric wind turbines will be purchased by Turkey Hill Dairy. The turbines were installed on October, 2010. After finalizing the installation, the wind turbines officially began producing power in January, 2011.

In partnership with PPL Renewable Energy and Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority, the Frey Farm Wind Turbine project includes two wind turbines that will generate about 25% of Turkey Hill Dairy’s annual electricity needs. That is enough power to produce six million gallons of ice cream and 15 million gallons of iced tea each year.

February 2011 marked the first full month the wind turbines were online and producing power. They generated over 769,677 kWh, providing 32% of the dairy’s electricity needs for the month.

The Dairy’s sustainability program includes waste recycling and reduction, decreases in fuel use through reduced transportation loads and distances, cuts in packaging material, and the use of steam power, which provides at least 75% of the dairy’s hot water needs.

Turkey Hill Dairy
www.turkeyhill.com/green

Romanian holiday for GE

Supporting Romania’s drive to increase its supply of clean energy, GE’s renewable energy group is teaming with wind farm developer Monsson Alma for two projects that will add 35 MW of wind capacity to the country’s power grid. GE will provide 10, 2.5-megawatt wind turbines and 10 years of maintenance for the Silistea 1 project, which will be owned by SC Romconstruct Top SRL and four 2.5-MW machines and five years of maintenance for the Mireasa 2 project, owned by SC Eco Power Wind SRL.

Developing wind farms is a cornerstone of Romania’s effort to reach its renewable energy commitment to the European Union. The target is to have 24% of its energy produced from renewable resources by 2020. The country recently extended green certificates issued for renewables projects from 2015 to 2017 and increased other financial incentives for wind-energy developers.
Both projects are about 20 km from the Fantanele Wind Farm, which also is based on GE 2.5-megawatt wind turbine technology. When completed, Fantanele will be the largest onshore wind farm in Europe. Monsson Alma was the original developer of the Fantanele project, which has been acquired by CEZ Romania, a leading regional utility.

“Wind power will increase Romania’s energy security and independence. It will also help expand and modernize the country’s energy infrastructure leading to less pollution, new opportunities for green jobs, and investment,” says Ricardo Cordoba, president of GE Energy Western Europe and North Africa.

GE
www.ge.com/wind