Twenty years ago on page 6 of the January 1988 edition of Power Engineering magazine, a full-page ad introduced “POWER-GEN ‘88” to the world. The inaugural event, which grew to become POWER-GEN International, was held at the Orlando Convention Center from December 6-8. The event covered fossil and solid fuel power generation, including coal, oil, natural gas, municipal solid waste and other waste fuels. “Paper abstracts are invited,” the advertisement read. That opened the floodgates, which, over the next 20 years, would lead to thousands of papers researched, written and presented at the world’s largest and most prestigious exhibition and conference for the power generation industry.

Power Engineering magazine has been PGI’s flagship media sponsor since the very beginning 20 years ago. This year, to celebrate POWER-GEN International’s 20th anniversary, we’ll take a look back at some of the issues and events making news in 1988. Many of the same issues continue to make news today.

For instance, a news item headlined “Duke tells how nuclear can be competitive” discussed how the then-named Duke Power Co. analyzed an Advanced Light Water Reactor project being developed by EPRI, the Department of Energy and nuclear industry organizations. The ALWR was seen as offering a way to return nuclear power to a financially competitive position.

Duke’s analysis chose the ALWR concept hands down over alternative technologies. Duke’s modeling showed ALWR “completely replaced coal-fired capacity for new, base-load additions required in the first decade of the next century,” according to the news item.

Not surprisingly, capital costs proved the most sensitive parameter. The Duke report showed that a 10 percent rise in capital cost would eliminate ALWR from any capacity expansion plan. The next most significant variable was forced outage rate. The expected rate of 6.15 percent was found to be much lower than other baseload alternatives. If the rate were to double, however, the nuclear technology would be eliminated from consideration. Fuel cost proved less important, a finding that remains valid 20 years later. The ALWR’s fuel cost could rise as much as 30 percent without eliminating the technology from the mix. And O&M costs could rise as much as 40 percent.

The report’s authors at Duke were particularly prescient on one point that remains contentious even tdoay: “Nuclear power would also have to be acceptable to the public and the politicians.”

A second feature article in the January 1988 issue of Power Engineering examined gasification combined cycle (GCC). Authors Junaid Yasin and Joseph Gwozdz of Sargent & Lundy wrote that the technology would provide electric utilities with “efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally desirable opportunities for power generation in the 1990s.”

The cost for a GCC varied between $1,300/kW and $1,860/kW, quoted in 1984 dollars. For integrated plants, Sargent & Lundy projected nominal GCC costs in the range of $1,300/kW to $2,000/kW. The complete GCC concept was in demonstration at Southern California Edison’s 100 MW Cool Water facility, an artifact in itself given California’s current opposition to coal-fired generation. Capital cost at that plant was $2,600/kW.

The technology demonstrated ample environmental benefits, the article reported. Sulfur dioxide emissions were expected to be 0.076 lb/MBtu for GCC. Conventional pulverized coal plants had an SO2 emission rate of 1.2 lb/MBtu. Where NOX was concerned, GCC was expected to emit 0.094 lb/MBtu, compared with 0.60 lb/MBtu for conventional coal. And particulate emissions were pegged at 0.009 lb/MBtu for GCC, compared with 0.03 lb/MBtu for PC.

Next month: More of our 20th anniversary POWER-GEN International retrospective.