Meet the power industrys leading experts at Power-Gen Europe 2011

Increased power generation flexibility and a growing share of renewable, and often intermittent, energy in Europes power grid means efficient and flexible energy management has become paramount for utilities and operators.

Alstoms power automation and controls solutions enable operators to manage their assets, from a turbine valve, to an entire power plant or even an entire fleet of plants, seamlessly and efficiently. Alstoms open platform, based on the Microsoft.NET framework, offers a flexible architecture and an integrated platform to improve efficiency and reduce costs at many levels from operator to maintenance activities.

These were presented at Power Gen Europes conference today, together with papers on Alstoms leading flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) systems. 

While the share of renewable energy continues to grow in Europes energy mix, fossil fuels still represent nearly 60% of Europes power generation installed capacity. This presents serious challenges in terms of lowering CO2 emissions in line with Europes ambitious environmental targets.

Alstom is leading the race to provide efficient  carbon capture and storage  solutions to limit CO2 emissions from fossil-fired power plants. These were presented at Power Gen Europe conference via a technical paper on Alstoms innovative chilled ammonia post-combustion capture technology.

This followed a presentation on a cost assessment of fossil power plants equipped with CCS under different typical scenarios, presented on Tuesday at the conference by Jean-Francois Leandri, Marketing Director for CCS technologies at Alstom Power.

Other technical presentations by Alstom highlighted:

• its leading pumped storage hydro technology, the most efficient means of large-scale energy storage available today, as well as Alstoms environmentally-friendly hydro plant solutions,
• the UKs big and beautiful 878 MW Langage combined-cycle integrated power plant project, as well as a paper on Alstoms steam turbines for combined-cycle power plants,
• the Flamanville nuclear power plant currently being built in France and featuring the worlds most powerful nuclear steam turbine, Alstoms ARABELLE turbine,
• Alstoms world leading nuclear steam turbine retrofit solutions, and their potential to bring higher efficiency and life extensions to Russias nuclear installed base.

The share of renewable power in Europes energy generation mix continues to grow as strict environmental regulations push countries to lower their CO2 emissions. New solar and wind power capacity means Europes utilities and grid operators need to find ways to balance their portfolios and grids to keep a reliable and cost-efficient power supply.

Jurg Schmidli, Vice President of Alstom Powers Gas Turbines business, unveiled  Alstoms next generation KA26 combined-cycle power plant at Power-Gen Europes gas mega-session, which featured some of the worlds leading manufacturers in the gas industry.

The KA26 offers greater operational flexibility to meet the industrys current needs and enables the integration of renewable energy. Alstoms Carbon Capture Ready KA26 gas-fired plants can achieve over 61% efficiency and avoid more than 350,000 metric tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to taking around 145,000 cars off European roads. The KA26 can be set to operate down to 20% load and be brought back up to deliver more than 350 MW of electricity in less than 15 minutes. At baseload, it can provide over 500 MW, enough to supply around one million homes.

Visitors to Alstoms booth had experts at hand and high-tech displays to find out more about Alstoms latest gas upgrade,and why Alstom is the pioneer in operational flexibility.

Alstoms experts also presented technical papers at the conference, covering Alstoms gas and steam turbine offering as well as its flue gas desulphurisation systems, for which Alstom is the worlds leading supplier.