GE Power taps IoT to reduce coal power plant emissions
GE's new Digital Power Plant for Steam monitors and analyzes data from more than 10,000 sensor inputs across a power plant to help plant operators make smarter decisions about how to optimally run their power plants. The company says the software increases efficiency up to 1.5 percentage points, allowing for five percent less unplanned downtime and three percent lower CO2 emissions. Every point of efficiency lowers CO2 emissions by two percentage points and can reduce fuel consumption by 67,000 tons of coal per year, while maintaining the same megawatt output.
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"About 40 percent of electricity today is supplied by coal-fired generation," says Steve Bolze, GE Power president and CEO.
Bolze adds that coal is forecast to remain the world's second largest energy source through 2030, and will remain especially important in developing economies. But the systems in coal-fired plants are highly complex, average efficiency rates are low and the plant technology itself is typically very mature — in Europe, 50 percent of active coal-fired plants are more than 25 years old.
But even as coal maintains its prominent place in the global energy mix, 174 countries have signed on to the Paris Agreement, an accord reached at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris last December. The signatories agreed to reduce carbon emissions in an effort to limit global warming to an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.
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"The world is going to need 50 percent more power in the next 20 years and it will need to be affordable, accessible, reliable and sustainable," Bolze said in a statement today. "In order to meet these needs and achieve the Paris COP21 goals, companies must embrace digital technologies that can enable and accelerate transformation to help decarbonize the world. Together, with our customers, we're on a journey to realize the true power of leveraging software and analytics to provide comprehensive digital solutions that drive greater efficiencies that are environmentally compatible."
GE says its solution will help eliminate 0.58 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions — equivalent to removing 120 million cars from the road, switching 20 million incandescent bulbs to LED and adding 550 million square miles of forest (absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere).
Operating on GE's Predix platform, the new Digital Power Plant software applications and capabilities include the following: