Summary: Electric generators with gas turbine prime movers have a strong recent reputation as being flexible and relatively “clean,” if fueled by natural gas. Their flexibility comes from their capability to be rapidly deployed, and then provide a reasonable growth path via:
Summary: Electric generators with gas turbine prime movers have a strong recent reputation as being flexible and relatively “clean,” if fueled by natural gas. Their flexibility comes from their capability to be rapidly deployed, and then provide a reasonable growth path via:
A large number of small to medium-sized peakers that can be deployed close to load-centers and/ or intermittent generators.
The above bullet can be planned to evolve to extremely efficient (>50%) cogeneration generators by adding steam-generators to convert residual heat in the combustion turbines’ exhaust to medium-pressure steam and pass that through a steam-turbine generator.
In situations where strong water-conservation is needed the low-pressure steam output can be condensed via a cool-water loop that is passed through cooling towers (rather than simply being vented to the atmosphere) and recycled.
The ‘Cleaner” in the above post-title is by selecting “hydrogen-ready” gas turbines, then upgrading these to a low-percentage-, medium-percentage- or 100%- hydrogen fuel. The latter would basically make the combustion turbine renewable if the hydrogen is produced by electrolysis using renewable electricity (commonly known as “green hydrogen”). This is examined in detail in this post.
