Remarks by
Robert S. Kripowicz
Acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
to the
Advanced Turbine Systems
Annual Program Review Meeting
Alexandria, Virginia
December 4, 2000

I want to add my congratulations - on behalf of the Fossil Energy program - to all of you here today at this final meeting of the Advanced Turbine Systems Program.

Congratulations are well deserved for the efficiency goals you have exceeded, the emission reduction goals you have surpassed, and the breakthrough performance gains you have reached. Your successes have been extraordinary, and you have proved that the sceptics back in 1992 were wrong and that you were right.

I also want to brag about the Advanced Turbine Systems Program. Along with industry, the Department's Offices of Fossil Energy and Energy Efficiency and Renewables had the foresight to design the right program then to fit today's goals and to respond to today's market and today's issues.

And I might add that I am proud of the role that the Congress played in this effort. I was on the House Appropriations Committee staff back when this program began. And I will admit that it took a little convincing to get Members in line behind the ATS program.

Why did industrial power houses like GE, Westinghouse, Solar and others need federal support? Who stood to benefit...the companies, the taxpayers, or both?

What convinced Members of Congress, certainly on my committee, was the way the program was to be structured....the way it would build on the strengths of private industry, but also bring into the mix the unique expertise of our universities and our national laboratories.

That blending of talents was the program's strongest selling point. It showed that this was truly to be a national program....carried out for the national good...cleaner power, more affordable power....a way to diversify and strengthen the way we generate power in an economy on the doorstep of unprecedented growth.

Our thinking was "outside the box" in 1992. But what was new then has become a model for today. What was unique in 1992 in designing a new program has become today's standard operating procedure. Your design was bold. You were ahead of the times. I'm glad I had a role in it.It pays, at times, to take a retrospective look at success. It all seems so obvious now, but if you'll bear with me, let's go back to the scene in 1992.

In 1992, we were at a point in our history where:

• Energy forecasters, including our own Energy Information Administration, were NOT predicting the urgent need for new power plants and replacements for aging plants that has materialized today. There was overcapacity in the power system.

  No one could imagine the explosive growth that was to come in the form of the digital economy or the power demands that would accompany it. No one could have foreseen the run on gas turbines that has developed today. Who would have thought back then - at a time of overcapacity in the industry - that today, for many vendors, gas turbines would be a sold-out commodity through at least 2004?

• Acid rain was a major environmental concern, but global warming hadn't yet become a national and international issue.

  The first implementation phase of the reduced sulfur dioxide emissions regulations under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 was still three years away, and the Energy Policy Act had just been enacted.

• Energy efficiency was talked about, but had not become the urgent issue it is today. And of course, there was a lot of talk about balancing the federal budget.

It was in this environment that some people - in the industry, in the Administration and on Capital Hill - began to look over the horizon and ask "What if the projections are wrong? What if the economy takes off, and energy demand grows beyond anyone's expectations? What if, for whatever reason, we can't build enough coal plants soon enough, or clean enough? What about this huge untapped domestic energy resource called natural gas?"

The Energy Policy and Conservation Act had major impacts on today's scene. EPACT was the starting point for the last major energy industry - the power industry - to move toward restructuring, to move toward a more competitive market environment. And natural gas turbines began to look like a good choice in an environment where capital costs, timely construction, flexibility to meet changing demands...all began taking on more prominent roles in the power equation.

EPACT set a target for improved performance of gas turbine systems with a goal of ". . . over 50 percent efficiency in the mid-term." The Act required that within one year of its passage, proposals were to be solicited to meet this new goal.

Which proves my point about the foresight to design a new turbine program at a time when the very first signals of market changes first began appearing. We were ahead of the game.

What we envisioned were leapfrog improvements. Evolutionary advances were being made by industry. But we wanted to go beyond incremental improvements. We wanted to push outward the boundaries of what seemed possible in 1992...beyond what was considered acceptable levels of risk by industry....to go faster and farther than what industry was willing to do by itself.

So we talked with industry about a cost-sharing partnership. We asked many of you what you saw as the problems to reaching a set of unprecedented goals, and I hope one of the testaments many of you will give to this program is that we listened. And we took what you were saying seriously.

We went further than just talking. We organized extensive roadmapping exercises. The turbine industry, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Gas Research Institute, our academic institutions, our national laboratories....all were part of the program planning. In 1992, that was an unprecedented approach to planning a government program. But it paid off.

The strategy was to fund teams led by U.S. turbine manufacturers - to develop advanced turbine systems from concept and component development to full-scale prototype demonstrations. Major contracts were competitively awarded. New competitions were initiated at the completion of key stages. And the private sector's cost-sharing rose as the technologies matured and risks were reduced.

In parallel with these major contracts, generic research and development addressed key technical issues. The South Carolina Institute for Energy Studies was chosen to manage a more fundamental systems research program. This consortium, now consisting of 100 universities in 38 states, carried out research guided by industry. It was relevant research because it was industry - not government - that defined the needs.

We set some aggressive goals:

• Ultra-high efficiencies: 60-percent for utility systems and a 15-percent efficiency improvement for industrial systems.

• Environmental superiority: nitrogen oxide emissions reduced to 10 parts per million or less, reductions in carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and unburned hydrocarbons.

• Cost competitiveness: a 10-percent lower cost of electricity than current costs.

We set the bar high. These goals represented major challenges in engineering, materials, and thermodynamics. They truly represented the "4-minute mile" of turbine technology.

We are here today, in large part, to proclaim success. We have broken the "4 minute mile," and we can be justifiably proud.

Recently, all of the offices at DOE were asked to compile a list of their 4 most significant accomplishments over the last 8 years - a common request during a transition period. On both the list we submitted from Fossil Energy - as well as the one from the Energy Efficiency office - was the advanced high-efficiency, ultra-clean gas turbine.

Back in February of this year, Secretary Richardson was able to announce General Electric's breakthrough H System™ gas turbine was crossing the commercial threshold. [Read Announcement]

His words bear repeating. As he said in Greenville, South Carolina back in February "Today we are seeing the most advanced combustion turbine anywhere, incorporating breakthroughs that were barely imagined a decade ago. This milestone will not only help maintain a cleaner environment, it will help fuel our growing economy, and it will keep electric bills low in homes and businesses across our country."

It is not often that Secretaries of Energy can announce a success that will mean as much to our energy and economic future.

The GE turbine will be the primary power source at a power plant being built near Scriba, New York, by Sithe Energies, one of the world's largest independent power producers. Commercial power production is scheduled for 2003. It will also be part of the Baglan Energy Park in South Wales, United Kingdom, scheduled for commercial operation in 2002.

With the GE H System™, we can now safely say that the design basis for "next generation" of gas-fired power systems has been established.

Siemens Westinghouse also has given us an ATS success story following a somewhat different route. New innovations have been tested, demonstrated, and introduced into commercially offered machines. The company's W501G entered commercial service in March of this year, and conversion to combined-cycle operation is scheduled for 2001.

And out of the supporting research effort has come the effective transfer of aerospace technology to large land-based turbine systems.

The first fully-integrated ATS [advanced turbine systems]-class machines won't begin operating for another couple of years, but a major benefit of this program has been the spin-offs it has created:

• Closed-loop steam cooling is now used at the first and second stage nozzles and turbine blades to solve the conflicting goal of higher efficiency and lower NOX emissions.

• Single crystal fabrication of turbine parts means that the engine can now withstand higher operating temperatures.

• Non-destructive evaluation techniques have been developed to verify production quality of single crystal blades.

• Turbine blade suppliers now have ultrasonic, infrared, and digital radiography x-ray inspection techniques.

• Thermal barrier coatings to insulate and protect the metal substrate of turbine blades from combustion gases are being used where applicable throughout the production process.

• Dry low-NOx combustion technology pioneered by GE in the early 1990s and further developed in the ATS program is now a component of more than 250 GE gas turbines.

So, we can be justifiably proud of the progress we've made. And it has come at exactly the right time.

In 1999, the gas turbine industry experienced unprecedented growth... orders up almost 340 percent. Some turbine manufacturers report order backlogs stretching to the year 2004.

Today, there is a new environmental consciousness - both in terms of regional pollutants such as NOx and global emissions such as CO2. Advanced ultra-clean turbines address both.

Natural gas turbines are expected to make up more than 80 percent of the power generating capacity to be added in the United States over the next 10 to 15 years. 96 percent of the more than 200 new power plant projects announced earlier this year plan to use natural gas and most will use gas turbines. The global market is huge: worldwide power generation could approach $100 billion over the next decade.

But new challenges lie ahead.

Utility restructuring, increasingly stringent environmental regulations, and a growing demand for peak power, intermediate duty capacity replacement, and distributed generation are combining to establish a need for "next generation turbines."

Once again, we are calling on technology. In fact, today we are announcing two new turbine related projects [Read announcement]:

One is to continue improving gas turbine combustors, pushing NOx emissions even lower. It is clear that as future power plants require gas turbines with higher pressure ratios and higher turbine inlet temperatures, the need to control NOx will continue to be a major technical challenge.

Even the combination of today's state-of-the-art combustors, coupled with selective catalytic reduction, may not be able to meet emission targets of 3 parts per million or less. We need to continue pushing forward to develop new and cleaner burning combustion systems.

The second project will be to develop a "smart power turbine" sensor and control system.

We need to be able to measure firing temperatures directly and more accurately - controlling peak gas temperatures to an accuracy of, say, plus or minus 20 degrees F rather than the 100 degrees or so that can be the variance in the hot gas path of today's turbines. We need to have better sensors that can assess the wear of key turbine components in real-time, rather than during maintenance shutdowns.

In an industry relying more and more on gas turbines and struggling to maintain reliable reserve margins, squeezing every megawatt of power out of a turbine can go a long way toward maintaining the integrity of our national power grid. And better sensors and controls could offer a relatively inexpensive way for generators to run their turbines closer to ultimate design limits and boost marginal capacity.

For the longer-run, we have embarked a new turbine program, the Next Generation Turbine Program. Our goal is to create the government-industry partnerships that will develop low-cost, fuel- and duty-flexible gas turbine power plants, perhaps adapting these machines into hybrid configurations with fuel cells.

Like the ATS program, this will involve industrial teams, undergirded by industry-academia consortia. We are again mobilizing the nation's best talents to address new challenges of the evolving U.S. electric power industry.

When the ATS Program was designed, it was a unique, out-of-the-box but well thought out and planned program. Now, we know this is the way to design a successful program.

We will adapt this model. We will call again on the strengths of our academic and industrial communities. And we are confident that, down the road, we can - and will - achieve the same success.

Thank you for coming here today. And thank you for making this partnership work.