Episode 110 | Ageless Assets | PowerGen+ Series (Live)
Projects at existing sites are commonly called “brownfield,” and new developments are called “greenfield.” Despite these terms, I believe that updating equipment or extending the lives of plants at brownfield sites is green policy.
Think about it. Utilities can use much of the existing infrastructure. Environmentalists should be ecstatic. Rather than developing a virgin spot of land, industrial expansion is kept to a minimum.
For my Feb. '21 virtual PowerGen Plus panel on asset management, I spoke to three guests about efforts to extend these plants' lives:
Denis says his team at Babcock & Wilcox has been primarily focused on converting coal plants to natural gas. This has been popular with utilities because they’re essentially swapping one fuel for another that produces the same reliable power output but half the carbon.
He does point out that a retrofitted coal plant will likely serve a new purpose as a "peaker" gas plant rather than a "baseload" facility that runs 24/7. “It can help, in many cases, an existing coal plant, make it on the margins,” he says. Denis also presented an offering B&W has to "turn down" coal power and essentially follow the load of renewable energy.
Eric, my renewable panelist, says his team is mainly developing wind projects. Some of the oldest wind farms are only about 40 years old. Eric says this is a dance between O&M and OEM. If they replace old OEM parts, they can decrease O&M, which is the name of the game for utilities.
Eric says these repowering projects took off after 2015 with the passage of Production Tax Credits in Congress. According to these standards, projects are eligible for PTCs as long as the value of the facility has 80% or more coming from the new capital expenditures. He says these projects can be as simple as replacing the blades, all the way to replacing the original foundations.
My nuclear panelist, Richard, says their role is much more regulatory in nature. Almost none of the hardware for nuclear facilities needs to be updated in order to get a license extension. Instead, they have to navigate a tricky maze of paperwork to keep operating, usually from a 40 to 60-year license, and now to 80 and possibly 100 years.
"It is a long process, but we have a pretty good cookbook for going through that process," he says.
I also asked them about the power outages in Texas that were still happening at the time of the panel. Eric says cold weather packages are available for wind turbines. Richard points out that the Texas event was different from hurricanes in Florida or California wildfires. "This was less obvious to the industry that it was going to occur."
Dennis says the remdies for events like Texas come down to economics. If it makes sense to weatherize for extreme events, they should be done. On the other hand, the simple solutions may not cost that much at all.
"It could be as simple as putting heat tracing on instrument lines," he says.
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