Even with a dramatic increase in the use of renewable power sources, coal — the most abundant fossil fuel on the planet — will continue to play a large role in meeting growing needs for electricity. Forecasts project more than a four-fold increase in worldwide power demand by 2050, due to population growth and raising the standard of living for billions of impoverished. Meeting this estimated demand will require the equivalent of building a new 1000 MW power plant somewhere in the world every two days for 50 years.
Therefore, EPRI has announced the Global Coal Initiative to accelerate research on producing power cleanly and flexibly using coals from around the world. The initiative starts with nine R&D programmes on a number of near-term issues around coal, and on advanced coal-fired power plants that generate virtually no air pollution and with negligible emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas implicated in global warming.
Stephen Gehl, EPRI’s director of strategic technology and alliances said, “The Global Coal Initiative will spearhead research on methods for keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by sequestering it in sinks such as plant life or exhausted oil fields. We expect clean coal technologies such as integrated gasification combined cycles and pressurised fluidised-bed combustion to be competitive with natural gas on cost of electricity in the 2010 – 2020 timeframe.” Gehl continued. “The timing for cost-effective carbon sequestration will depend on how vigorously this research is funded.” The first nine R&D programmes in the Initiative address both near-term needs, such as mitigating boiler problems when burning low-grade coals, and long-term goals such as developing advanced “powerplex” coal plants that co-produce electric power, hydrogen for fuel cells, and commercial chemicals, all with near-zero emissions and no net CO2.
Early participants will have an opportunity to help shape the content of the initiative as well as receive products and services as soon as the end of this year. Southern Company has joined the initiative under a programme that is developing “real options” business models to help power producers evaluate their technology investments in a deregulated market. Coal still is the backbone of US electricity production, as well as the most accessible fuel for large developing nations such as China and India. “Coal supplies a major portion of the world’s electricity, and this will be true in many countries for at least the next 20 years; and to compete, it must do so in an environmentally acceptable manner” said Stuart Dalton, an EPRI director.
In other EPRI news the industry-funded Power Delivery Reliability Initiative is beginning to deliver results helping assess the vulnerabilities of the power delivery system and cope with increasing demands for power with limited capacity and distribution.
The Initiative, launched in February, consists of two parallel programmes that evaluate the transmission grid and distribution systems in detail, providing a “holistic look at the US bulk power system” according to Karl Stahlkopf, EPRI vice president of power delivery.
In the transmission area, new operating tools are already in use to improve forecasting and operations. A real-time security data display has been developed for information on flowgates and key system voltages to assist in monitoring. The system is a web server that collects real-time data on about 50 flowgates and 300 buses and displays them numerically and graphically on top of the transmission gridmap. Prior to the implementation of this tool, grid security coordinators had access only to data on their own area of responsibility.
Another tool is the interchange data calculator, or “tag dump,” which automatically computes the impact of transactions crossing a grid control area.
“In the distribution area, the programme is already unearthing the root causes of recent distribution outages and identifying the underlying problems,” says Bernie Ziemianek of EPRI. Because different distribution systems use widely different distribution architectures, equipment, and operating practices, five representative types of systems are being assessed.