Pushing the Boundaries of Climate Change Technology

American Electric Power’s Nick Akins tells Power & Energy how technological innovation is diversifying the company’s fuel mix.

“We've proposed several transmission projects around the country to move these renewable resources to the load centers”
-Nick Akins

Much of American Electric Power’s (AEP) fleet is coal-fired generation, making climate change the foremost important issue in the company’s agenda right now. As EVP of Generation, Nick Akins spends the majority of his time focused on the development of technology, understanding the changing role of coal and how it is used and perceived. AEP is also focused on developing a balanced portfolio, including renewable sources such wind power, natural gas and solar, as well as nuclear. The company is also experimenting in other forms, such as sodium sulfide battery storage technologies.

"We are focusing on what we need to do in the future to meet customer demand," says Akins. "As EVP of Generation, I have the fossil and nuclear generation fleets, our capital construction program that includes environmental and new generation, our barge lines and our commercial operations part of the business, as well as our fuel procurement. As one of the largest utilities in the US, it's a very significant operation. We purchase from 75 to 80 million tons of coal a year, which is the largest in this country. We follow the legislative activities associated with climate change; we are involved with several activities in that regard."

Akins points out that AEP has taken an active part in developing federal legislation related to climate change, and was involved with the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, also know as the Waxman-Markey Bill. Akins cites AEP's main motivation for this involvement as the opportunity to match up the technology needed to meet the reduction targets set forth by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Understanding how credits will be allocated is vital to AEP's future plan, ensuring it has the technology to match the stipulations so its customers don't have to.

"We're intimately involved with the legislative side because we are doing things that give us the credibility of talking about the technology advancement to match up with, in a realistic fashion, reduction targets that Congress may come up with.

"We have a lot of coal-fired generation; our customers need those credits that are allocated to us, so we can use those allowances to pay for construction to improve our fleet from an environmental performance standpoint, relative to C02. We also wanted to see international provisions placed on how the rest of the world will move forward. We still have some work to do on those, but we've been very focused on that legislation as it moves through Congress.

"We are at the forefront of development of carbon capture and storage technology. In September we installed the first fully integrated capture and storage program at one of our power plants in West Virginia, which will take a small, 20-megawatt electric slipstream, capture the flue gas, convert the C02 and then store it approximately two miles below the surface of the ground. It is a significant step toward commercialization of capture and storage technologies," he explains.

This is by no means AEP's only power plant pushing the technological boundaries. The John Turk Power Plant is the first ultra-supercritical coal unit in the US - a much more efficient form of combustion coal technology. Akins explains that ultra-supercritical plants operate at very high levels of efficiency, with very high steam temperatures. This supports combustion at higher temperatures, meaning the amount of coal used is significantly less, and there are lower emissions as a result.

"The efficiency on today's ultra-supercritical versus supercritical is around three percent," he says, "which although it may seem small, in the long-term when you talk about year in/year out operations, it's a pretty significant reduction in the amount of coal that you would have to use. It's at least 10 percent better than the existing coal facilities that were built in the late 1970s AND early 1980s, so it's a huge improvement.

"The ultra-supercritical coal technology is a step up from supercritical. It will run at temperatures exceeding 1100 degrees Fahrenheit, which improves the overall efficiency of the generation itself. It's driven by metallurgical differences, because the piping associated with the boiler has to be able to support those ultra-high temperatures, and whenever you have the metallurgical aspects support higher steam temperatures that improves the efficiency. The metallurgical aspects enable you to use higher steam temperatures and improve the efficiency," reiterates Akins.

Climate legislation

He believes that climate legislation will undoubtedly become mandatory, but knowing when it will happen is the question. As early a date as 2010, with it becoming effective in 2015, is possible. Akins points to the company's integrated gasification combine cycle technology that it proposed in West Virginia and Ohio, and its failure to be approved in Virginia because carbon capture and storage had not yet been proven from a commercial standpoint.

"It's important for us to advance those technologies," he continues. "From a portfolio management standpoint, we are heavy on coal in a carbon neutral environment; we have to be focused on other base load forms of technology, which includes nuclear. We believe nuclear and coal are the two base load opportunities we have, but you have a lot of load that you serve in an intermediate and peaking type standpoint. It's become a priority for wind energy to be brought in, because the energy cost is less.

"Overall, the cost is more, but when you account for CO2, coal costs will go up as a result and that means it's important to have wind power. It's also a priority for us to be able to uprate our nuclear station: we have plans on uprating nuclear by 400 to 500 megawatts and that is a relatively small cost; at least a lesser cost than a new coal-fired station.

"We are also looking at natural gas facilities, and have several facilities that are coming online. Here in the US there is a lot of fracturing of the new supplies of natural gas and prices are pretty tempered, so that is likely to be one of the ways where we manage that transformation. Natural gas, new coal-fired generation, nuclear and solar from a rooftop standpoint are a priority for us. We're also looking at sodium sulfide batteries to inject in certain parts of our system."

Akins' singling out of wind energy is a pointer to the pivotal role it will play in AEP's fuel mix, as the company has begun expanding its activities and capacities in this area. AEP owns some of its own wind farms, but the majority of its resources are purchased from the output of other farms. Akins explains that this is done because of the capital situation being driven by the economy.

AEP has trimmed its capital budget back from $3.75 billion to $1.8 billion, a significant drop, and is now finding itself in a position where priorities must be made. Although the company is able to order a substantial amount of environmental retrofitting, it knows the areas in which to create economic efficiency. AEP continues to develop the construction of its own wind power projects, but its sole focus for wind is purchasing power arrangements.

Akins does not shy away from noting the effect of the economic recession on integrating more renewables into the company's energy mix. He adds that capital projects included transmission projects; environmental retrofit projects for scrubbers to remove sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and mercury; as well as other projects where rehabilitation of the system in general have been deferred as a result of the economy. The US has lost nearly 20 percent of its industrial load, and the loss of capital projects as a result was a natural occurrence. 

Down the line

Transmission is an essential component to the renewables energy mix. "As far as transmission is concerned, it is absolutely critical for renewables, particularly wind, to be transported to the load centers," says Akins. "Typically in the US, wind power is generated in areas of the country that are very sparsely populated from a load perspective, so transmission is critical in order to move that renewable energy.

"We at AEP have the largest transmission system in the US and the highest voltage, 765 KB transmission, and we've proposed several transmission projects around the country to move these renewable resources to the load centers. It remains to be seen how that's going to progress, but to further optimize and make sure that our entire generation portfolio, including renewables and base load generation, is operating in the most efficient fashion will require substantial investment in new transmissions.

"There's a lot of discussion of the effect of including renewables within the transmission system as the actual operations of the power system change as a result. A lot of studies are being done in that regard, and we're participating in those studies to make sure that when we do add substantial amounts of renewables we can respond from a system stability standpoint to ensure that we can continue to allow those renewables to be injected into the system."

The US federal government's stimulus funding is attracting almost every utility in the industry, and AEP is no exception. The company is currently evaluating the areas in which it can take advantage of the funding and is working alongside the state authorities - a large portion of the money is handed from federal to state jurisdictions for evaluation. AEP is looking for funding assistance in its carbon capture and storage projects: "We've asked for the next phase of our carbon capture and storage project to go to 235 megawatts, which is the first commercial scale we're asking for stimulus funding associated with. We're also looking at support for our gridSMART technologies for advanced metering for other forms of renewable projects as well," explains Akins.

AEP's efficiency aims are also based on a local level with its smart grid initiative 'gridSMART'. The system analyses what the customer does on his side of the meter to determine when he uses electricity, installing efficiency at the customer usage through to the generator activity. "Through the advancement of our gridSMART technologies, we're looking at efficiency gains that could be made all along the path from generation to the customer to make wise decisions from a customer standpoint."

Technology

In order to incorporate renewables into its generation and successfully transmit that energy across its service area territory, technological innovation is AEP's key continuing its success into the future. Akins exemplifies the company's coal generation - currently it can generate off a single coal unity approximately 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour; and its comparison to wind power, which is approximately 10 cents a kilowatt hour. Solar is around 25 cents a kilowatt-hour; so the advancements of these technologies is critical.

"Solar continues to make efficiency gains from a production standpoint, and the same applies to wind power, so we continue to see advances there. These technologies will have to continue to improve from a cost standpoint to make sense to our customers," he explains.

"Clearly our main advances in technology are carbon capture and storage, to make sure that that becomes viable, as well as transmission and new technologies associated with generation. We have historically supported FutureGen; we pulled out due to the funding issues associated with it, but we continue to support that technology. We were the first innovating hydrogen technologies, which are a more advanced type of coal-fired generation. We continue to push the envelope on new generation technologies," concludes Akins.

Nick Akins is Executive Vice President of Generation for American Electric Power.

John W. Turk, Jr. Power Plant

• Estimated completion date is summer 2012.
• The cost of the plant is approximately $1.6 billion.
• SWEPCO's investment will be 73 percent, around $1.2 billion.
• Plant construction will create well over 1000 jobs at height of construction.
• The plant will bring an estimated 110 permanent jobs to the area.
• Annual payroll is projected to be $9 million.

AEP's renewable portfolio

Solar

AEP's activities in solar energy have focused primarily on education and outreach. More than 125 schools participate in AEP's 'Learning From Light' and 'Watts on Schools' programs.

Wind

AEP owns 310.5 MW of wind generation capacity in Texas and also has agreements to purchase 742 MW from several wind power facilities in Illinois, Indiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Both of its farms, Trent Mesa Wind Farm and Desert Sky Wind Farm, sell the energy that is produced to wholesale energy supply contracts.

In addition to owning and operating its own facilities, AEP also is a major purchaser of wind power from wind projects, such as FPL Energy's Southwest Mesa and Weatherford Wind Energy Center.

Hydroelectric

AEP's 17 hydroelectric facilities in Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan generate more than 800 MWof electricity. Smith Mountain Hydro Project, on the Roanoke River southeast of Roanoke, Virginia, was the nation's first major development combining run-of-the-river hydro with pumped storage generation.

Biomass

Until the company sold the Fiddler's Ferry and Ferry Bridge power plants in 2004, AEP co-fired biomass in 4000 MW of coal-based power generation in the UK. AEP also has conducted biomass co-firing tests and analyses at several of its power plants in the US.

Supercritical and ultra-supercritical technology

Conventional coal-fired power plants, which make water boil to generate steam that activates a turbine, have efficiency of about 32 percent.

Supercritical and ultra-supercritical power plants operate at temperatures and pressures above the critical point of water, i.e. above the temperature and pressure at which the liquid and gas phases of water coexist in equilibrium, at which point there is no difference between water gas and liquid water. This results in higher efficiencies - above 45 percent.

Supercritical and ultra -supercritical power plants require less coal per megawatt-hour, leading to lower emissions (including carbon dioxide and mercury), higher efficiency and lower fuel costs per megawatt.

Source: www.greenfacts.org