Novel Gas Turbine Challenges to Support the Clean Energy Transition

Hiyam Farhat and Coriolano Salvini
Additional contact information
Hiyam Farhat: Department of Industrial, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering, ROMA TRE University, via della Vasca Navale 79, 00146 Rome, Italy
Coriolano Salvini: Department of Industrial, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering, ROMA TRE University, via della Vasca Navale 79, 00146 Rome, Italy

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 15, 1-17

Abstract: The ongoing energy transformation, which is fueled by environmentally cautious policies, demands a full synergy with existing back-up gas turbines (GTs). Renewable energy sources (RESs), such as wind and solar, are intermittent by nature and present large variations across the span of the day, seasons, and geographies. The gas turbine is seen as an essential part of the energy transition because of its superior operational flexibility over other non-renewable counterparts, such as hydro and nuclear. Besides the technical aspects, the latter are less popular due to controversies associated with safety, ecological, and social aspects. GTs can produce when required and with acceptable reaction times and load ranges. This allows a balance between the energy supply and demand in the grid, mitigating the variations in RESs. The increased cycling due to operational flexibility has adverse effects on GT components and the unit efficiency. The latter dictates how well GTs make use of the burned fuel and influence the emissions per energy unit. This paper investigates these aspects. First, it presents the effects of increased penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) into the grid. Second, it defines the new operation requirements including more dynamic load regimes, the provision for high occurrences of starts and stops, continuous and variant load cycling operations, extended partial loading or stand-by, and other conditions not foreseen under the classic baseload or cyclic operations. Finally, it proposes the overhauling of the present GT inspection and lifing criteria to meet the new role of GTs.

Keywords: cycling; creep-fatigue interaction; flexible operation; lifing criterion; grid stability; energy balance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/15/5474/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/15/5474/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:15:p:5474-:d:874284

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().