The influx of intermittent solar and wind technologies, and the
retirement of large baseload fossil fueled power plants has left a
generation mix that is dependent on unreliable renewable
sources. As a result, there is a large and growing need among
investor owned utilities and municipal and cooperative power
providers for customized and strategically located distributed
generation engines, which can rapidly alter their power
generation to meet changing power market conditions. MAS believes
this need will grow as further renewable generation assets are
added to the grid and other large scale, inflexible baseload
generation is decommissioned. Distributed generation systems -
which utilize conventional engine technology from well-known
suppliers - provide power suppliers with a number of benefits
relative to new large gas fired turbines:
- Ability to operate as either base load or peaking plants
- High power density creating ability to locate a number of
plants at different points on the grid, as required to create cost,
power quality, grid reliability and efficiency benefits
- Reliable fast starts (can provide power to the grid within
three minutes) at minimal incremental costs, which contrasts with
turbines, where a large number of starts significantly increases
maintenance costs
- Flexibility to scale to suit need from a capacity perspective
(10-200 MW)
- Efficiency generally better than most large utility system-wide
heat rates
- Small size of plants creates significant advantage over much
larger power plants, which may require large investment in
transmission to effectively contribute to the grid from a stability
and power quality perspective.