![]() (IIR), in spite of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the plant has enough gas to operate at least until the end of the year. According to information received by Industrial Info Resources Inc. Today, Irsching Unit 4 is fully operational and running in support of the wind generation and at baseload as needed (except for a 32-hour period in January due to a leak). Several years later, when I was writing my book on gas turbine combined cycles (CRC Press, 2019), the plant, now owned by Uniper and renamed Irsching Unit 4, was in “cold standby,” that is, one step removed from being completely “mothballed.” (Even at the time when I visited the power plant in the fall of 2013, the plant was averaging only one-fifth of its planned capacity.) Apparently, the generation from coal and renewables (mostly wind from what I could see) was such that there was really not much need for power from a plant (even a world-record-holding one at that!) burning very expensive natural gas imported from Russia. On the day of my visit, at 10C ambient temperature, the monitors in the operator room indicated 540 MW net output at 60.3% efficiency. Based on Siemens Energy’s SGT5-8000H gas turbine, the plant was the first one to break the 60% net LHV (lower heating value) efficiency barrier. At that time, the plant was owned by E.ON and in commercial operation since 2011. On a cold and dreary October day in 2013, I paid a visit to the Ulrich Hartmann Combined Cycle Power Plant in Ingolstadt, Germany. ![]() ![]() As coal-fired plants are retired, gas-fired plants will often be needed to take their place. In some cases, highly efficient combined cycle units were taken offline because they just weren’t needed. Natural gas–fired power generation has seen its ups and downs over the past couple of decades.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |