POWER January 2011 - 41

POWER VIEWS
GE Leverages Leading-Edge
Technology and a Balanced
Product Portfolio in 2011
Paul Browning, vice president, thermal products for GE Power & Water, sees the
greatest short-term business opportunities beyond the U.S., in " high-speed "
countries.
G
eneral Electric (GE) serves customers
in more than 100 countries, giving
it a unique global perspective of
the power industry.
Peltier: What innovations in the
company's 2011 product line
should we expect?
Browning: We are investing in a portfolio
of new products and reinvigorating existing
products. For example, we have upgraded
our steam turbine product line with
a series of new products that focus on new
large fossil and nuclear plants and renewable
energy markets.
We have also invested heavily in developing
advanced gasification products
as cleaner coal combustion and power
generation projects emerge, although we
are frustrated at the slow pace of policy
implementation in the U.S. The world's
largest commercial-scale project using our
integrated gasification combined-cycle
(IGCC) technology to enter service is expected
to be Duke Energy's Edwardsport
plant when it reaches commercial operation
in 2012. Today's IGCC technology
is " carbon capture ready, " meaning that
it can be retrofit with our Carbon Island
should policy require a move in that direction
later. We are also working on a prefeasibility
IGCC with carbon capture for
storage project, the proposed Wandoan
project in Queensland, Australia.
We also look for some movement forward
in China toward adopting IGCC
technology very soon. We are working on
a front end engineering and design study
with China Power Engineering and Construction
Corp. right now. We expect to
find the cost of IGCC (without carbon
capture for sequestration) to be on par
with unsubsidized wind farms, so we are
also pushing for similar policy mechanisms
for IGCC.
We have some real strengths in fuel
flexibility in our gas turbines, as we con40
tinue
to invest in our products like our E
and B class gas turbines that customers use
around the world for flexible applications.
We are also increasing our investment
in flexible combined-cycle power plants.
We believe that the combined-cycle plant
is the throttle for the electrical power grid
and that heavy-duty and aero-derivative
combustion turbine performance is the
heart of the combined-cycle plant. In
the past, our interest was in optimizing
the full-load efficiency of these plants.
Today, with the increased penetration of
wind generation, combined-cycle plants
often start and stop daily, or even more
frequently. This much different duty cycle
requires improved part-load combustion
turbine efficiency, a more robust steam
turbine, and improved controls to manage
the plant processes. We will soon introduce
additional new products that can
provide spinning reserve to the grid with
much more cyclic operation tolerance and
much-improved combined-cycle plant
turndown to meet these emerging customer
needs.
We are also in the process of upgrading
our Greenville, South Carolina, manufacturing
plant to add the capability for fullscale
validation of its next-generation gas
turbines, heavy-duty compressors, and
gas turbine systems. When completed, the
test facility will enable a more-thorough
full-scale validation of heavy-duty combustion
turbines at the factory site and
add the capability to validate a complete
gas turbine system, duplicating conditions
our customers experience at a power
plant during operation. We also will
have the ability to run variable-speed,
variable-load tests to validate enhanced
flexibility features. The first milestone of
the advanced gas turbine test facility will
be the completion of the compressor test
stand. These expanded capabilities will
bring GE's investment in the facility to
approximately $170 million.
www.powermag.com
Peltier: How have recent lower gas
prices affected your company's
sales today, and what are your
plans should the price of natural
gas rise?
Browning: GE is technology agnostic,
as we offer an entire portfolio of energy
products. In some regions, such as the
U.S. with recent shale gas finds, the preferred
fuel mix today and in the coming
years seems to be wind and gas. In other
regions it might be nuclear or conventional
coal-fired plants with a growing renewable
component. The mix of technologies that
makes sense today for a particular region
is unique, so we have developed a range
of products that will meet most customers'
energy needs. Our products are well positioned
to be competitive regardless of a
region's energy mix.
A fast-growing sector within our renewable
energy portfolio is offshore wind. In
Western Europe, we've announced plans
to invest approximately €340 million to
develop or expand our wind manufacturing,
engineering, and service facilities in
the UK, Norway, Sweden, and Germany.
At the core of GE's European expansion
plans is the development of GE's nextgeneration
wind turbine, a 4-MW machine
designed specifically for offshore deployment.
As the largest wind turbine in GE's
fleet, it will incorporate advanced drive
train technology that eliminates the need
for gearboxes and control technologies
gained through GE's recent acquisition
of ScanWind. The technology is already
being demonstrated at a test site in Hundhammerfjellet,
Norway, where the first
ScanWind direct drive unit has been operating
for more than five years.
Peltier: What is GE's perspective
on the China and India markets?
Browning: We operate in a three-speed
world when it comes to global marketing
of power industry equipment and services.
POWER | January 2011
http://www.powermag.com
POWER January 2011

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