Episode 116 | Coal Considerations | PowerGen+ Series (Live)





I believe all energy families have a role to play. Coal, more than any other, gets the most grief. Yet the largest CO2-producers showed it had nearly unmatched reliability during the Winter ’21 storms in Texas.

For an April 28 panel on the future of coal plants, I wanted to present three options, and have one panelist represent each option:

  1. Carbon Capture: Jerrad Thomas, Business Development Manager, Engineered Systems Division (ESD), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHIA)
  2. Coal-to-Gas retrofits: Garry King, SVP, Global Services Leader, Power, Black & Veatch
  3. Load-Following retrofits: Phillip Graeter, Manager, Energy & Environmental Markets, Energy Ventures Analysis

Carbon Capture

Jerrad says there are three options for CO2 once it has been captured, 1) enhanced oil recovery, 2) industrial products, and 3) long-term sequestration. The last option has no market-driven financial incentive, though the government has 45Q tax credits in place for sequestered CO2 ($35/ton for EOR, $50/ton for sequestration).

One of the biggest complaints about the carbon capture process is the energy penalty (“parasitic load”) to capture carbon on a plant. Jerrad says their proprietary process is generally about 20%, depending on how the system integrates with the plant. However, he adds, ““If you could extract a fuel from the ground, that you could generate power from, and you could do it without producing CO2, and you’d have to take a 20% hit, you’d still do it, right?”

Coal-to-gas

We discussed this option in Episode 110, my panel on extending the lives of fossil plants. Garry says repower coal plants can consist of simply swapping out fuel to stripping a plant down entirely. Projects in the past have even consisted of supplementing the coal mix with natural gas or biomass (“dual fuel”).

Garry says considerations for these projects are not always CO2-influenced. He breaks them down to Technical & Financial (i.e. fuel costs, new dispatch profile) and Non-technical (i.e. environmental, political). In addition to fuel switching, these projects may also incorporate further future proofing for technologies not yet adopted, like carbon capture or hydrogen production.

Sometimes considerations can move beyond fossil. “You can bring in renewables,” he adds. “There’s a lot of land around a facility.”

Load-following retrofits

I discovered Phillip while reading a white paper EVA prepared in Jan. ’20. During his panel presentation, Phillip pointed out that two phenomena have occurred since 2008, when coal generation hit its peak.

First, nearly half of all coal plants in the U.S. sat idle at any point in 2020. Second, coal plants have been ramping up far more than in the past. These plants were designed to run full-out, as baseload generation. Yet their survival may depend on their ability to load-follow renewables or gas.

“I think the key is not to extend the lives of coal plants indefinitely,” he says, “but really until we have the technology, be it on the energy storage side, that allows us to operate the grid in a reliable and effective way, how we’re doing it currently with fossil fuel plants.”

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