POWER September 2020 - 36

RECIPROCATING ENGINES
Benefits of Reciprocating
Engines in Power Generation
Many experts believe power plants constructed with reciprocating engines are the
ideal complement to intermittent renewables. Recip plants are extremely flexible.
Facilities can be sized for almost any use case; engines are highly reliable, provide
quick start and stop capability, and can be run on a variety of liquid and gaseous
fuels; units are very efficient (especially when incorporated into combined heat and
power schemes) over a wide range of loads; and plants are relatively low cost and
can be built quickly with minimal risks of delay.
Aaron Larson
E
veryone in the power industry (and
really in the world) is familiar with
reciprocating engines.
After all,
they are what powers most vehicles that
people drive or ride in every day. But reciprocating
engines are not what comes
to mind when most people think about
electric power generation. The more typical
power plant utilizes turbines to spin
generators, driven by either steam or
natural gas.
" Often customers have a longstanding
turbine bias, and believe that
a multi-engine plant will need dramatically
more maintenance staff, " Jukka
Lehtonen, vice president of Technology
& Product Management with Wärtsilä
Energy, told POWER, noting that a lack
of familiarity with the technology is a
hindrance to more widespread adoption.
" In reality, operations and maintenance
staffing for a recip plant is about
the same as needed for a gas turbine
plant of similar size. "
Beyond the manpower misconception,
there are other things that people
get wrong about recip plants. A lot of
folks think reciprocating engines are
prone to high emissions; after all, who
hasn't seen a diesel truck driving down
the road with black smoke billowing out
of the exhaust? However, original equipment
manufacturers (OEMs) are keenly
focused on that issue.
" The biggest concern of our customers
nowadays is emissions, and especially
finding solutions for reducing CO2
emissions, "
said Dr. Tilman Tütken, MAN Energy
Solutions' head of Sales Power Plants,
Europe. " Our engines are equipped with
the latest emission-reduction equipment
that keep emission levels at a minimum.
Furthermore, they are also prepared for a
CO2
-neutral future as they are capable of
36
running on synthetic fuels derived from
renewable energy using Power-to-X technology.
As an example, dual-fuel and gas
engines will also be able to run on carbonneutral,
synthetic natural gas in the future
without further technical adaptions, making
them a future-proof investment for
customers. "
Flexibility Is Key
Real estate agents often say a property's
three most important attributes are
location, location, and location. Today,
the three most important attributes of a
power plant could be flexibility, flexibility,
and flexibility. And recip plants have that
trait covered.
Lehtonen noted that reciprocating
engines offer flexible dispatch. They can
be started multiple times per day with
no
maintenance
penalties. Wärtsilä's
engines have a minimum uptime of one
minute, minimum downtime of five minutes,
and a minimum stable load of 10%.
These features make engines ideal for
balancing renewables, capitalizing on ancillary
service opportunities, and optimizing
real-time dispatch requirements.
Reciprocating engines are also fuel
flexible. They can deal with a very
broad spectrum of liquid and gaseous
fuels. Natural gas and heavy fuel oil
are common, but engines can also be
configured to run on different kinds
of biofuels and biogases, as well as
carbon-neutral synthetic fuels, as previously
noted. Furthermore, some decentralized
engine-based power plants
are utilizing liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Tütken noted that many conventional
liquid-fueled engines can easily be retrofitted
for dual-fuel operation, which
offers owners planning flexibility.
Recip plant sizing is also flexible. Facilities
can be built to literally any MW size
www.powermag.com
1. Recip plants come in all sizes. The Quisqueya
facility in the Dominican Republic includes
24 Wärtsilä Flexicycle 50DF multi-fuel engines,
providing a combined 430 MW of capacity.
Courtesy: Wärtsilä
using medium-speed engines of roughly
1 MW to 20 MW each. This makes plants
ideal for distributed generation requiring
sub-50-MW plant sizing and for larger
plants in the hundreds of MW (Figure 1).
Jim Williams Jr., NorthWestern Energy's
director of Thermal & Wind Generation,
said the flexibility also extends
to " right-sizing " power generation capabilities
at any given time. For some
background, NorthWestern Energy
signed a deal with Caterpillar Inc. in
June to have the well-known machinery
and engine OEM supply an integrated
power solution that includes six
Cat G20CM34 gas generator sets (Figure
2) for a new 58-MW power plant to
be built near Huron, South Dakota.
Williams
explained the
right-sizing
concept, " Let's say we need an additional
20 MW of power in the system. If the
only way to meet this need is a large 50to
60-MW combustion turbine, we would
have to derate the engine, which would
be extraordinarily inefficient and more
costly for our customers. On the other
hand, by having a fleet of 9-MW generator
sets, such as what we're installing in
Huron, we can incrementally increase or
decrease our power capacity in smaller
blocks that allow us to meet the power
need as efficiently as possible. "
POWER | September 2020
http://www.powermag.com

POWER September 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER September 2020

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