EnergyAustralia has begun operations on the 320-MW Tallawarra B gas-fired energy station in New South Wales (NSW)—Australia’s first peaking energy plant able to working on a pure gasoline and hydrogen gas mix. The venture’s begin on Feb. 19 additionally marks GE Vernova’s first deployment of a hydrogen-capable dual-fuel 9F gasoline turbine.
The $300 million ($196 million) open cycle gasoline turbine (OCGT) venture contains a GE Vernova 50-Hz 9F.05 gasoline turbine. It’s anticipated to run initially on pure gasoline and transition to a mix of 5% of hydrogen by quantity by 2025, relying on “the event of a hydrogen manufacturing {industry} of an acceptable measurement and scale,” GE Vernova stated on Monday.
The venture in Yallah (60 miles south of Syndey) is situated subsequent to EnergyAustralia’s 440-MW Tallawarra A gas-fired station, a GT26 mixed cycle energy plant constructed to switch a 320-MW coal-fired energy station that operated till 1989. Whereas Tallawarra A is slated for an effectivity improve later this 12 months, Tallawarra B’s fast-start and dual-fuel capabilities complement Tallawarra A’s flexibility attributes, that are rising essential for regional balancing. Tallawarra B is notably Australia’s “first gas-peaking energy station with whole emissions offset over its operational life,” stated EnergyAustralia.
The corporate, a CLP Group subsidiary that serves as a serious retailer throughout japanese Australia and holds a 5-GW era fleet, stated NSW’s fast-start and suppleness wants have grown extra pressing after AGL, Australia’s largest generator, shuttered its huge 1.6-GW coal-fired Liddell Energy Station within the NSW Higher Hunter area in April 2023. “Tallawarra B permits and enhances extra renewables getting into the system as coal-fired energy stations retire,” stated Mark Collette, EnergyAustralia’s managing director.
Pinning Down Satisfactory Hydrogen Provide
Growth of Tallawarra B kicked off in Could 2021, furnished with A$78 million from the NSW authorities to assist ship monetary shut, together with A$5 million from the federal authorities to make sure the venture was hydrogen-ready.
Beneath the Could 2021 funding settlement, EnergyAustralia will purchase 200,000 kilograms of renewables-based hydrogen—as much as 5% of the plant’s gas use—beginning in 2025 to offset direct carbon emissions from the venture over its operational life. In keeping with NSW’s Hydrogen Technique, unveiled in October 2021, the funding will place Tallawarra B as a foundational off-taker of hydrogen produced by the proposed Illawarra hydrogen hub. In March 2023, the NSW authorities awarded Linde subsidiary BOC A$28.5 million to develop the hydrogen know-how hub on its current Port Kembla operations web site.
BOC, nonetheless, has not but made a remaining funding choice. The proposed hub is anticipated to incorporate a 10-MW electrolyzer with the potential to supply about 4 tonnes of hydrogen per day, although over the long run, the venture could possibly be expanded to a 650-MW electrolyzer. NSW, notably, in August 2023, additionally furnished Origin Vitality with A$45 million to develop the Hunter hydrogen hub 200 miles north in Newcastle.
Tallawarra B: Function-Designed
EnergyAustralia stated it selected an OCGT for Tallawarra B over a mixed cycle gasoline turbine “as a result of it’s sooner to begin and may present electrical energy into the grid extra rapidly when there’s excessive demand.” It in the end picked a consortium comprising GE Vernova and engineering, procurement, and building (EPC) agency Clough to construct the venture.
GE offered the plant’s GE 9F.05 gasoline turbine—its most superior F-class machine—together with the venture’s A78 generator, a generator step-up transformer, and a Mark* Vie management system. Gasoline turbine equipment had been “packaged in modules for the venture, which lowered on-site set up work whereas providing less complicated and sooner serviceability for the plant operator,” it famous.
As a vital venture element, GE Vernova additionally offered a A$13 million Plume Dispersion System (PDD), a 54-tonne gadget that sits on high of the exhaust stack to scale back the plume’s vertical velocity. “An OCGT works in a fashion just like a jet engine,” EnergyAustralia defined. “The exhaust from the turbine is extremely sizzling and, as we all know, sizzling air rises. The warmth of the exhaust gases relative to the skin air temperature means it rises quickly within the air. And not using a PDD on high of the exhaust stack, the exhaust gases would rise into the ambiance as a column of sizzling air.”
The PDD at Tallawarra B, crucially, minimizes the “potential results on the protection of plane utilizing the close by Shellharbour Airport,” EnergyAustralia stated. Tallawarra B’s “exhaust gases should meet a crucial plume velocity of not more than 6.1 meters/second or beneath 700 ft above imply sea degree, as stipulated by the Civil Aviation Security Authority,” it famous.
The World’s First GE Vernova Twin-Gasoline 9F.05 Gasoline Turbine
Since launching its first F-class machine in 1991, GE Vernova has obtained orders for over 450 GE 9F gasoline generators. The launch of Tallawarra B in 2021 marked not solely the primary of its sort inbuilt Asia but additionally the inaugural F-class machine designed to run on a mix of pure gasoline and hydrogen.
As Jeffrey Goldmeer, now GE Vernova director of Hydrogen Worth Chain, defined to POWER in 2021, the F-class gasoline turbine’s hydrogen functionality as configured with the DLN2.6+ combustion system “is nearer to fifteen% to twenty%.” The pilot venture Tallawarra B was deliberate to start operations with 5% hydrogen to bear in mind accessible inexperienced hydrogen, he urged. “In order that’s not a gasoline turbine limitation, that’s an entry level to the gasoline turbine,” he stated. “There’s room to develop because the inexperienced hydrogen provide chain will increase, as manufacturing will increase.”
GE Vernova has since made important headway in exploring combustion options to allow 100% hydrogen combustion all through its fleet. That features a collection of notable hydrogen combustion “firsts” for its H-class and aero-derivative gasoline generators, together with at industrial energy crops. Nevertheless, it has additionally got down to exhibit hydrogen combustion’s system peaking capabilities. Later this 12 months, for instance, a totally useful venture at Duke Vitality’s DeBary energy plant in Florida is slated to exhibit an built-in 100% hydrogen power-to-power system for industrial peaking, leveraging considered one of DeBary’s 4 83-MW GE 7E gasoline generators.
The corporate’s efforts to outfit its F-class with 100% hydrogen capabilities are, for now, progressing beneath a venture that’s backed with $6.6 million in funding from the U.S. Division of Vitality. In tandem, the corporate has individually got down to develop a retrofittable 100% ammonia-capable gasoline turbine combustion system that will be appropriate with GE’s current 6F.03, 7F, and 9F fashions. A collaboration introduced in January 2024 with Japanese built-in heavy {industry} group IHI Corp. targets a possible commercially accessible ammonia-capable product by 2030.
Ramesh Singaram, president and CEO of GE Vernova’s Asia Gasoline Energy section, on Monday highlighted Tallawarra B’s significance, suggesting that the venture would function an indication of the “substantive function that gasoline applied sciences can play in decreasing carbon emissions, guaranteeing dependable electrical provide, and preventing local weather change.” GE Vernova is “dedicated to delivering dependable, steady, cost-effective vitality that helps vitality suppliers, like EnergyAustralia, to help with creating a hydrogen provide chain and transitioning Australia to a decrease carbon future,” he stated.
Australia’s Quest for Decarbonized Reliability
Tallawarra B marks the primary gas-fired energy station inbuilt NSW in additional than a decade, however it is only one of a number of capability additions the state must urgently bolster its reliability profile.
NSW presently procures round 60% of its energy from 4 coal crops, however by 2033, three are set to retire: the 1.3-GW Vales Level B (by 2033), 3-GW Eraring, and a pair of.7-GW Bayswater (2030–2033). The state’s urgency stability its provide and demand profile amplified additional in February 2022, when Origin Vitality notified the Australian Vitality Market Operator (AEMO) of plans to retire the 3-GW Eraring Energy Station early in August 2025, citing financial hurdles.
Whereas the AEMO’s newest Vitality Safety Goal (EST) Monitor Report for NSW forecasts a surplus of as much as 1 GW for the area by means of 2025, it has warned that Eraring’s closure will precipitate a provide shortfall of as much as 1.4 GW by 2030. “At this level, agency capability from exterior this sub-region could be known as upon to satisfy demand in peak demand durations, however can’t be made accessible to the vast majority of New South Wales prospects resulting from forecast constraints on intra-regional transmission infrastructure,” it stated.
A minimum of over the close to time period, NSW could add 650 MW of extra variable renewable vitality (VRE) era. By 2033, new VRE sources will add as much as 3 GW. NSW plans to agency up the VRE with 3.7 GW of extra storage by 2033.
That may embrace Snowy Hydro 2.0, a 2.2-GW pumped hydro storage megaproject that’s projected for completion in December 2028. One other notable main storage venture beneath building is Black Rock’s Waratah Tremendous Battery, an 850-MW/1,680-MWh lithium-ion battery storage venture that ought to come on-line in 2024/2025. When operational, that venture may develop into the world’s largest battery vitality storage system, Black Rock claims.
Nevertheless, the AEMO stresses that gasoline energy will proceed to play a big function. Together with Tallawarra B, Snowy Hydro is anticipated so as to add a 660-MW OCGT plant close to Kurri Kurri by the tip of 2024.
The Kurri Kurri venture, recognized commercially because the Hunter Energy Challenge, will characteristic two Mitsubishi Energy hydrogen-ready F-class (M701F) gasoline generators. Snowy Hydro expects the OCGTs might be able to initially working on as much as 15% hydrogen. With “extra funding, we anticipate they are going to be able to as much as 30% hydrogen,” it stated. Like Tallawarra B, “the power to run on hydrogen depends on the stability of plant modifications and the provision of inexperienced hydrogen,” the corporate famous.
Tallawarra A Poised for Future-Resilient Improve
On Monday, EnergyAustralia’s Managing Director Collette urged the corporate’s hydrogen functionality varieties a cornerstone of its future technique. “We’re positioning each Tallawarra stations to play a long-term function in New South Wales’ vitality future and our personal plans to realize web zero by 2050,” he famous.
At Tallawarra A, EnergyAustralia is pursuing a venture to improve Tallawarra A’s 14-year-old GT26 gasoline turbine with a high-efficiency (HE) improve. The HE improve “blends cutting-edge know-how from GE’s industry-leading F and H class fleets with additive manufactured components and improvements in aerodynamics, materials science, and combustion dynamics,” GE Vernova has famous.
Whereas GE Vernova final 12 months urged the improve could also be operational by mid-2024, EnergyAustralia has made investments to make sure Tallawarra A is “additionally gasoline/hydrogen-capable when the inexperienced hydrogen manufacturing {industry} within the Illawarra is of an acceptable measurement and scale,” Collette stated.
“In April, we are going to begin a [A$90 million ($59 million)] improve and overhaul of Tallawarra A,” he famous. “This can enhance the capability and effectivity of the station from 440 MW to 480 MW whereas additionally enabling using as much as 37% hydrogen as a gas when inexperienced hydrogen is commercially accessible.”
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior affiliate editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).