The World Energy Council (WEC) holds big conferences, issues large quantities of lavishly produced books with titles like Living in one world and makes statements about sustainability. But what does it achieve?
Generally, its message of “sustainable energy development for the greatest benefit of all” seems to be targeted to the upper echelons of government, business and energy policymaking. According to the WEC its most recent event, the World Energy Congress held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in October, boasted among its 3000 attendees, “Three current heads of state from Latin America and the former president of Romania, 25 ministers and many leaders of global and local energy companies.” It was therefore surprising, but nevertheless encouraging, to see among the draft conclusions and recommendations from the Congress, recognition given to the mundane but crucially important issue of raising power plant performance levels.
In fact, the WEC Committee on the Performance of Generating Plant has been quietly collecting and analysing data for about 30 years and every three years or so publishes a report. Overall, these reports suggest that average performance, measured in terms of the traditional “technical” measures, for example availability, has been generally improving. Taking the just-published 1997-99 results for fossil-fired plant as an example, the WEC Committee, in its typically measured tones, reports that “steam turbine units reveal a further 1.2 per cent improvement in plant availability in comparison with the average results for 1994-96. This reduction is mainly due to a reduction in planned unavailability. Over the last 10 years, fossil fuel plants gained 4 per cent on energy availability factor, representing a 2.1 per cent gain on unplanned unavailability, and a 1.9 per cent gain on planned unavailability.” The WEC Committee concludes: “This clearly demonstrates a better usage of planned outages (duration, content, frequency, etc)” and “the indisputable progress made by electricity producers around the world.” However, averages are not the most illuminating way of looking at performance. And if the WEC activities were limited to this level of analysis one might reasonably question the value of the enterprise. The interesting thing is looking for variations in performance between plants, analysing the reasons for the differences and then doing something about them.
Thankfully, this is being increasingly recognised by the WEC. Although the formal published analyses seem to largely focus on averages rather than the differences that underly them, the numbers in the WEC database, as WEC itself would admit, do show wide variations in what power plants are achieving. And in its conclusions and recommendations following the Buenos Aires Congress WEC made the following significant statement: “If the substantial gap between worldwide average performance and the top performing plants could be eliminated through the application of best practices, this would result in an estimated saving of up to US$80 billion per annum in building and operating capacity and a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 1 Gt per annum, as well as a reduction in other pollutants.” On the basis of WEC case studies so far it turns out that equipment upgrades and technology enhancements are only part of the story. WEC estimates suggest that better management, improved decision making, and more attention paid to human factors account for about three quarters of the potential for improved power plant performance, while new technology can contribute only about 25 per cent. In the words of Bob Richwine, Senior Reliability Consultant with Mirant, and a key player in WEC’s performance improvement initiatives, “what you do with what you’ve got is more important than what you’ve got to start with.” Recognising this immense potential, the World Energy Council has embarked on a programme of workshops aimed at disseminating best practice, benchmarking, and closing the gap between the best and worse performers, between actual performance and potential performance. Among the benefits envisaged by WEC from this enterprise would be increased generating capability, fewer and shorter outages; improved power plant economics; reduced fuel use; and lower emissions. One likely beneficiary would be a country like India, where many power plants are running at well below half their design capacity. One of the WEC workshops has already been held there, while others have taken place in Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans and Brussels. The next is due to be held in China in April 2002.
It is good to see the World Energy Council getting its fingernails a little dirty in the real world of improving power plant performance.
Gasification: still hoping
Elsewhere in the World Energy Council’s report of conclusions and recommendations from Buenos Aires is the statement that “underground coal gasification, could meet total energy demand for many centuries with relatively low emissions.” This recognition of gasification’s potential should give comfort to the proponents of the technology, which still has a long way to go before it lives up to the expectations that have been widely touted for it.
Once again October saw the faithful gathered in San Francisco for the annual meeting of the Gasification Technologies Council. This did indeed include some discussion of underground gasification and a paper on an IGCC project at Chinchilla, Australia, which would use this technology.
But the conference also featured some frank remarks from Richard Ludwig, president of Teco Power services, a long-time pioneer of gasification for power generation (see p37). He noted that very few gasification plants have been built and even questioned why “we gather here each year and laud this technology, scrutinize and discuss the few operating projects and the challenges that never seem to go away.” Chief among the challenges are costs and reliability. So a recent US DoE fossil R&D solicitation specifically targetting improved gasification plant economics and performance, is timely.
