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 ad read. That opened the floodgates, which, over the next 20 years, would see 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 beginning 20 years ago. This year to celebrate PGI’s 20th anniversary we’ll take a look back at some of the issues and events that were making news. A lot of the same issues continue to make news today.
The April 1988 issue published results of Power Engineering magazine’s 22nd annual survey of utility generating plants. Here’s how that article began:
“The backlog of new generating projects listed in Power Engineering’s annual survey of electric utilities took a double hit this year. We show a total of 83 GW of planned new capacity…down from 128 GW listed last year. There are two reasons for this big decline: 1987 saw a large amount of new capacity going on line, which removed about 15 GW from the front end of the backlog, and utilities stopped reporting about 20 GW of indefinite capacity that they had been carrying. Finally, there were no new commitments in 1987 to compensate for these reductions.
“The biggest change…was in the nuclear subtotal and most of that was due to the large number of start-ups in 1987, although several projects were finally dropped. According to the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness, the new spokes-organization for the nuclear industry, a new nuclear plant was put on line every 10 weeks in 1987. As of year-end six more had full power operating licenses and two were in low-power start-up—meaning that 1988 will be the last year to see a significant number of nuclear additions in this century.”
The article turned its attention to gas turbines and found most of the action in the utility market focused on the natural gas-fired gas turbine sector. Key drivers included a rising concern for capacity shortfalls, relatively low natural gas prices and the repeal of the Fuel Use Act in 1987. The Act, passed in 1978, banned burning natural gas in new baseload generating capacity.
The magazine said a growing number of electric utilities felt they could buy insurance against shortfalls by building low-cost gas turbines. At $200 to $300 a kilowatt, gas turbines were the cheapest generation option available. New gas turbine technology offered heat rates in the combined cycle mode that, the article said, were as good as efficiencies available in boiler-type capacity. That meant the possibility of running in an intermediate- or even base-load mode was appealing—“if natural gas prices stay low,” the article said.
The article also identified what it said was a “new role” for electric utilities: utilities were beginning to function as “partial independents.” Some 34 utilities were identified as having subsidiaries that were developing or taking equity positions in cogeneration, small power and independent power plants.
One proposal came from Public Service Co. of New Mexico. PNM faced the problem of getting its investment in the Palo Verde nuclear plant into its rate base. At the same time it was seeing independents and cogenerators add capacity in its service territory based on a rising need for power in the 1990s. PNM proposed solving these twin problems by splitting itself into generating and distribution subsidiaries.
“The PNM proposal awaits action by New Mexico authorities, but it has captured the attention of many advanced thinkers in the utility,” the magazine reported. “It provides at least one path for freeing the generation side of the business from the shackles of the past so it can begin preparing for the future—rather than turning the future over to non-utility independents.”