Generator fuel

[kwired]

no, gas turbines dont need a boiler to operate. unless it is a combined cycle plant, where waste heat from the gas turbine is used to heat a boiler to produce steam.

and yes, our gas turbines used to be diesel powered until they were converted to NG

You might have me there, I am not a specialist in power plants, but I think there are some plants that can burn coal, NG, or other fuels to supply the same boiler, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[hurk27]

You might have me there, I am not a specialist in power plants, but I think there are some plants that can burn coal, NG, or other fuels to supply the same boiler, correct me if I'm wrong.

Sure many older plants and main line plants are coal fired and can burn oil as well as NG, just that they are not as efficient on NG because it doesn't have as much heat content as the other fuels, but with the price of NG coming down and the other fuels going up and the fact the government is trying to get rid of coal fired plants that can't meet the EPA reg's NG is starting to be a fuel of choice, before gas turbines were only used at peaking plants, these are small plants that they bring online in high demand times to meet the load demand, the benefit is fast start up with the gas turbine compared to the long time it takes a boiler plant to fire up and get a head of steam up.

Another fuel used is PCI (pulverized coal injection) which is much cleaner then lump or rock coal, but still many coal plants are being shut down because the cost of meeting EPA's new regulations is too high for the plant to be profitable, around here we have lost a couple of plants that were shut down.

Years ago Florida stopped allowing coal fired plants because of environmental concerns and shut down many of them, after this most plants burned bunker C or nuke but after visiting Florida in 2005 I saw a few plants with stock piles of coal so someone must change the regs again to allow it again, the funny thing was bunker C was one of the most expensive ways to produce power but the electricity rates down there were some of the lowest in the country, moving to Indiana my electric bill almost tripled as I was paying 4 cents a kWh when I left and here we were over 10 cents a kWh. yet coal was the common method here back then and was also the cheapest method of producing power.