110 Megawatt emergency generator ? 1

[hmchi]

A high-tech company is planning to build a manufacturing facility, when in full operation, will consume 220MW of electricity. The manufacturing process is very sophisticated involving precision control and manipulation equipment and high energy use at the same time. A black out would cause extensive damage and losses.

If a power outage does occur, the company wants to have at least half of the electrical power capacity available within the plant, or 110MW, to keep the plant running at reduced capacity and minimum losses. The question is how to build this 110MW of emergency power ?

The advice they currently received is to use 55 Diesel Generators, each rated 2MW, which is less than ideal --- the facility needs to be a multi-story building where space is a premium, let alone the high civil and mechanical costs.

What would you recommend ? Would you recommend gas turbines running in hot standby ? with DGs as black-start power ? What size machines would you recommend ? They must be able to have the generators picking up the load 10 to 15 seconds after the blackout.

They must be prepared to sustain a blackout lasting a week to 10 days.

Being a hi-tech company, the facility may be obsoleted in 5 to 7 years so they are not interested in investing in a utility class generating plant that may last 30 years.

Your comments will be welcomed.

 

[peebee]

60hzhmmm, that thing is INSANE.

 

[60hzhmmm]

peebee, I like the ladders in the crankcase. All u'd need
is a lounge chair and a TV.

 

[tomatge]

Guys, before you get too carried away with the Sulzer diesel there are a couple of points to bear in mind.

Firstly, as you have noticed, the thing is absoutely HUGE. It will also be rather heavy.

Secondly, it will be expensive, and completely out of the question when the customer only wants power for a few years. I understand that Wartsila (the owner of Sulzer diesel) rarely offer slow speed plant for stationary power any more.

Thirdly, the load acceptance characteristics will be pretty poor. These beasts do not like sudden load changes. In terms of standby power, you would not be able to cold start one of these and run to full load in less that several hours.

Fourthly, the power quality from one of these is not the best. Because the machine is onnly rotating at about 100rpm, firing on twelve cylinders, in effect every time each cylinder fires you get a temporary increase in machine torque. This will manifest in ocsillating power output, and quite likely light flickering.

Still, it is pretty impressive ...

 

[busbar]

Minor Aside — I imagine the fuel line serving the subject engine is correspondingly massive.

 

[lengould]

Your requirement describes to a T the market targeted by Pinnacle/VRBPower Canada/Australia, Regenesys Uk, Sumitomo Japan; Each with their versions of the Vanadium Redox Flow electricity storage system. 500 MW or more? discharge periods from a few seconds to 12 hours or more?

It is a "battery" where the electrolyte is a solid polymer membrane, and the anodes and cathodes are liquid vanadium oxides. The discharge anode reaction converts VO5->VO4 while the cathode converts VO2->VO3. Reversing the reaction happens by supplying a charging current, and the liquids are pumped in and out of the cells to storage tanks which provide as much backup time as you provide storage.

quote <Back-up System for Energy Blackouts and 'Brownouts'
In addition to being at full power in one millisecond, the VRB/ESS can provide megawatts of power for hours, making it ideal for emergency power back-up systems and Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS),>
<The VRB/ESS can optimize the bulk production of electricity in large generating plants. The VRB/ESS can store energy for 12 hours at night and supply megawatts of energy for stretches of 5 hours or more in the day (peak shaving). The VRB/ESS can increase the amount of energy a plant sells without the need of increasing generating capacity.>
<Hydro Tasmania has awarded a contract to Pinnacle VRB for the supply and installation of a Vanadium Redox Battery as part of the King Island wind farm expansion.>

regenesys quote<The system has been designed to work in the range from 5 to 500 MW or more and for discharge periods from a few seconds to 12 hours or more. Its high speed of response makes it suitable for many different applications on a power system.>

<The Tennessee Valley Authority of the USA has also started construction of a similar plant at Columbus, Mississippi. It will be used to reinforce the power system in an area of weak distribution.>

<PacifiCorp has begun construction on a site near Moab, Utah known as Castle Valley, for an alternative electrochemical energy storage system based on the Vanadium Redox Battery (VRB). The PacifiCorp 250 kW - 2000 kWh unit is the first large-scale commercial user-based application of the technology in North America. Other installations are operational in both South Africa and Japan.>


Checkout the following links.

http://www.vrbpower.com/

http://www.pinnaclevrb.com.au/index.asp?menu=3

http://www.sei.co.jp/redox/e/index.html

http://www.regenesys.com/ourproducts/regenesys.htm

http://www.hydro.com.au/newsroom/mediareleases/2002/16July2002_100.html

[Following from Sumitomo)
1 Bank : 170kW
- Grid voltage : 200, 400, 6600V (3phase 3wires, 50 or 60Hz)
- Type of the electrolyte tank is assumed as polyethylene. And the tanks are common for each bank.
- Heat exchangers are not included in space.
- The above table is reference only. Contents may be changed after detail design.

There appears to be no reason not to install e.g. several hundred sets of cells/inverters to supply whatever power rating you might need, then install several (huge) vanadium electrolyte storage tanks and pumping systems.

Pinnacle/VRBPower has installed several systems, e.g. Pacificorp in Utah, one in South Africa, one in Australia. Your problem may be to get enough vanadium to supply the system for the backup time your are talking, pure vanadium appears to be in short supply, though apparently Makenzie Bay Resources is just waiting for a few contracts like this to open a new mine in northern Canada.

 

[Bbird]

While I find Lengould's post informative and thorough I am a bit sceptical after reading the suggested web sites.

In theory the VRB (Vanadium Reduction/oxidation Battery) solution is ideal, green and available already but there must be something stopping it from widespread application at the moment.

The various companies making VRB are not big enough yet to meet the power industries' needs. While I have absolutely no idea about the VRB costs there seems to be a huge practical problem on its implementation.

The Japanese company Sumitomo appears pretty well ahead of the others by having several commercial installations and a strings of publications on their research. The feature that caught my eye is the size of the tank volume of the electrolyte. Sumitomo's research paper indicated a 1 m3 volume of vanadium electrolyte can generate between 17.5 to 20 kWh of electricity.

If we are serious in proposing the VRB technology to solve hmchi's 110MW standby power need then we must have about 5500m3 electrolyte ready to maintain every hour of the power supply. To meet hmchi’s sufficiency of a week or 10 days standby power then 7*24*110,000/20 = 924,000m3 will be needed. If the electrolyte weighs anything like water we are talking about 924,000 tonnes. Say by putting it in underground in a 5m (16.4ft) high basement the floor area will still be 184,800m2 which is big enough for 34 American football pitches (5400m2 each). If hmchi manages to find only one American football pitch size basement with a 5m headroom then the standby power is only good enough for just under 5 hour operation.

Is there something wrong with my logic or VRB can be a lot more manageable in size now?

 

[jbartos]

Suggestion: Fuel cells might be given a consideration since they are high quality emergency power source. No need to wait 10 seconds for a start.

 

[hmchi]

lengould, I heard about the Japanese Vanadium Redox batteries for peak shaving before, but did not know that they can be this big in capacity. Thanks for the info and I will look into that.

I did hear that they are very very expensive, however, this may be the very type of project for it.

jbartos, I heard that the largest fuel cell to date is 1000KW, and they are guinea pigs really. Am I wrong, do you have more info ?

 

[lengould]

Good point, bbird, I hadn't realized how big the storage tank would become. That is large. At that point, what I would be doing is
a) consider installing only enough solution to handle 12 or 24 hours.
b) install a spur railroad line with 50 or 100 locomotive parking spots.
c) arrange with some nearby rail companies to pay them a fee to guarantee (some of) their freight locomotives as standby generators. 2-3 megawatts could easily be extracted from each modern one with temporary connections.
d) use the locomotives to run the inverters directly during an outage, then as chargers after the outage to get you back up fast.
e) start buying retired locomotives and parking them in the yard. Do a minimal overhaul until they're just good enough to generate on standby, connect them permanent using their existing automation controls to your central authority, exercise them often. Install a large fuel distribution system in the parking space.

BTW, Makenzie Bay is at:

http://www.mckenziebay.com

quote<A new, proprietary, Vanadium purification process (“McKenzie Bay Process”) was developed by McKenzie Bay’s team of Vanadium recovery experts for production of high-purity Vanadium chemicals. The McKenzie Bay Process has produced Vanadium chemicals that have met or exceeded specifications demanded by a manufacturer of Vanadium-based batteries. Projections based upon SNC’s internal knowledge indicated Lac Doré could be among the low cost producers in the world for certain high-purity Vanadium chemical it planned to produce.>

 

[lengould]

On fuel cells for your application, I think the nearest one is the SOFC by Fuelcell Energy of ?Mass/Conn? USA. Their 2-3 MW net DCF 3000 is currently shipping and appears well proven in the 2Mw size. I'd guess a comparable installation to tha above might be a lot more expensive, but more compact, more efficient (claims up to 50% in the fuel cell, plus future gains with (relatively) low cost brayton cycle turbine heat recovery not yet built). Also possibly multifuel e.g. gas/(?No2 Oil?)/etc.

http://www.fce.com/

quote< In the nearer term, it is believed that cost effective small MW class hybrid systems can be configured with efficiencies of 70% or better. Although power plants utilizing this system are not yet available, the design is showing promise in its development stage. Under a Department of Energy-supported Vision21 program, activities are underway to operate a subscale system and to develop an ultra-high-efficiency 40MW powerplant design.>



At that point, you could likely only afford it by running it 24/7, but you would have the reliability of multiple units in your own control.

Thats where my interest comes in, I've patented new non-turbine brayton cycle engine systems to recover electricity or refrigeration at the temperatures these units exhaust.

Also consider contacting Enbridge in Calgary, Alta, Can. (Largest nat. gas wholesaler in Canada.) They're being very quiet but I've heard they/their partner Global are advanced on SOFC development.

http://www.enbridge.com/companies/corporate.html

http://www.globalte.com/advantages.htm

Also Ceres Power in GB, LowTemp-SOFC (550 deg, claims to &quot;overcome problems of sealing of cell membranes&quot;, which might be a concern to watch for.)

http://www.cerespower.com/who_we_are.htm

This from ECN Tech

http://www.ecn.nl/bct/products/sofc_tech/metal.en.html

points out some caveats to beware in SOFC.
re. Development of metal substrate supported cells
quote<The development of this new type of cell is still entirely within the R&D phase. This development line works on a redesigned cell type that provides optimal opportunities to meet the system requirements. Mechanical integrity for reducing risks of cracking during cell manufacturing, stack building and clamping, and of course enduring thermal cycling, is considered a major prerequisite.>

Something to watch out for with SOFC's is that once started, they MUST NOT BE SHUT DOWN in current technology. Apparently only < 10 thermal cycles in lifetime of ceramic membranes. If you don't have baseload for them, then dont buy them.

This from Enbridge partner Global Thermoelectric

http://www.globalte.com/advantages.htm

quote<Global's SOFC no longer needs to operate in the challenging 800°C to 1,000°C range. At temperatures below 800°C the interconnect plates that are used to facilitate fuel and oxygen flow, collect electrical current and hold the fuel cells in place in the stack, can be stamped standard stainless steel components rather than made of exotic metal alloys or expensive ceramic materials.

Thermal Cycling
Thermal cycling involves bringing a fuel cell system to operating temperature, then returning it to ambient temperature before returning to operating temperatures. Planar SOFCs have not traditionally been capable of thermal cycling because glass seals were used around the cells and gas manifold. When such a unit is thermally cycled, the glass seals crack causing leaks and the rapid deterioration of the fuel cell stack. In 1999, Global developed a proprietary high-temperature compressive seal, permitting the stacks to be thermally cycled>

Good Luck

 

[GerH]

There is a scheme to bring multiple parallel diesel standby sets online in well under 10 seconds. The sets all start with their breakers closed and as the excitation builds they just pull into sync. Any set that is not rotating at say 3 secs has it's breaker tripped.

A multiple of 2MW sets might have the advantage of good resale value. Think how easy it would be to offload 50 CAT 3516's. An contractor would probaly factor this is his price. Talk to CAT.

What sort of UPS? There is a version of rotary UPS that has direct coupled diesel engines. e.g. Piller

Gas Turbine starting is in the range of 30 seconds from what I've seen.

 

[jcai]

GOOD MORNING FOLKS - DONT WANT TO GET INTO DETAILED DISCUSSIONS AS THERE ARE MANY GOOD CONSULTING ENGINEERING OUTFITS OUT THERE WHO CAN HELP BETTER THAN I CAN - BUT THE LARGEST GAS TURBINE GENERATION OUTFIT THAT I KNOW OF THAT USES OUR AIRCRFAT DERIVED GAS TURBINES SUCH AS RB211 OFFA THE B.747-400 - IS ROLLS ROYCE DERBY - IN U.K. - WOULD SUGGEST YOU CONTACT THEM - ALSO AN OUTFIT IN USA CALLED SOLAR TURBINES . ALL THE BEST - SOUNDS LIKE A HEAPAFUN -BEST REGARDS - J.C.

 

[jbartos]

Suggestion to hmchi (Electrical) Oct 13, 2003 ///\\\
jbartos, I heard that the largest fuel cell to date is 1000KW, and they are guinea pigs really. Am I wrong, do you have more info ?
///Visit

http://www.westbioenergy.org/reports/55010/fuel_cell_research_report.htm

for feasibility of 6000kW fuel cell cogen plant\\\

 

[ScottyUK]

This might be worth considering for the really critical loads. I stumbled across it while looking for something else, so no opinion is offered.

http://www.geindustrial.com/cwc/pro...7&catid=211&id=cp2000&lang=en_US&SMSESSION=NO