Repowering, dismantling and recycling in the wind industry – a joint effort to be handled sustainably

With this aim in mind, the industrial associations RDRWind e.V. and VGB PowerTech e.V. have signed a cooperation agreement at HUSUM Wind 2019. As part of this cooperation essential issues of dismantling management will be jointly discussed and dealt with. The cooperation will include research projects, a coordinated knowledge management, a quality seal for sustainable dismantling and the participation in elaborating industry standards.

Annette Nüsslein (1. from left), Martin Westbomke & Andrea Aschemeyer (2. & 1. from right), all RDRWind e.V., Thomas Eck, Oliver Then (2. & 3. from left), both VGB PowerTech e.V., Photo: Katharina Wolf

Currently, the DIN SPEC 4866 “Nachhaltige Demontage und Recycling von Windenergieanlagen (Sustainable dismantling and recycling of wind turbines)” is on the agenda. RDRWind e.V. initiated this work jointly with the DIN. The DIN SPEC 4866 will now be completed with the technical support of VGB PowerTech e.V. and will be published next year.

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Dr. Georg-Nikolaus Stamatelopoulos new Chairman of the VGB PowerTech

Dr. G. Stamatelopoulos

Dr. Georg-Nikolaus Stamatelopoulos is the new chairman of the international technical association VGB PowerTech e.V. The Doctor of Energy and Process Engineering was elected to this office by the Board of Directors during the VGB Congress “Innovation in Power Generation 2019” in Salzburg/Austria.

Dr. Georg-Nikolaus Stamatelopoulos (49) studied mechanical engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and received his doctorate for the calculation and optimisation of power plant cycles at the Technical University of Brunswick. He started his professional career with leading international plant constructors, where he worked for over 13 years in various management functions. In 2010 he moved to EnBW, where he has been Senior Vice President Generation for Renewable and Conventional Generation since 2014.

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VGB Quality Award 2020: Proposals Welcome

Quality Award

In the 2020 anniversary year of the VGB PowerTech, Ordinary and Sponsoring members can nominate projects that have delivered an outstanding quality in execution for the award.

The VGB Quality Award has been established to increase awareness for the commercial value of quality and to highlight examples of suppliers who have delivered extraordinary quality in services and products. The VGB Quality Award is covering all electricity and heat generation technologies: hydro, wind energy, biomass, biogas, nuclear, oil-, gas- and coal-fired power stations, as well as storage technologies, and all kind of projects: new build, refurbishment, maintenance, or decommissioning.

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VGB Innovation Award 2019: Flexible coal-fired power plants and cost-efficient wind turbines honoured

The VGB Research foundation awarded the VGB Innovation Award 2019 to Dr Marcel Richter (30) for the dynamic modelling of a coal-fired power plant for evaluation of flexibility measures (award category: future-oriented) and Dr Meik Schlechtingen (35) for developing a model-based approach for wind turbine fault detection using SCADA data (award category: application-oriented).

(FLTR) Hans Bünting, Marcel Richter, Meik Schlechtingen and Oliver Then

The award, endowed with a total of 10,000 €, was handed over by the VGB chairman on the occasion of the VGB Congress Power Plants 2019 in Salzburg, Austria.

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Water chemistry in power plants – Site tour of an Indian delegation

Overview of the
site tour program

From 22 to 30 August 2019 an Indian delegation visited several coal fired power plants and laboratories in Germany and the Netherlands. The visits aimed at gaining insights into water chemistry concepts as well as into investigation methods applied in the operation of coal fired power plants.

They formed a part of a project which the VGB is conducting for an Indian consortium consisting of the power producer NTPC, BHEL (Bharat Heavy Industries Limited) and IGCAR (Indira Gandhi Center of Atomic Research). The project comprises a peer review of the consortium's proposed water chemistry concept for a 700°C power plant.

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DigiPoll@Energy

Digitalization and Industry 4.0 have a far-reaching impact on the energy sector. The VGB project DigiPoll@Energy analyses the as-is as well as the to-be state of the digital transformation regarding the approach and the digital applications. The objective of the poll is to identify best practices across generation technologies and value chain steps and thereby prepare the ground for joint research projects and actions.

The VGB members will receive an invitation via email in October 2019 to participate in the poll.

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Design Optimisation of Grate Firings for Biomass Combustion by Coupling CFD and DEM Simulation Tools – European Transfer of Results

To enable a European exchange of information about advanced technology for biomass utilisation in grate fired boilers the final reports of three research projects, which were financed by the German Ministry of Economics, have been translated by VGB.

The three research projects are:

• Research project no. 294 carrying out an experimental and numerical study of the mixing and transport processes of granular media in grate firing systems in order to understand the involved mechanisms and the influence of material and system parameters. To realize this, the Discrete Element Method (DEM) was used as a modelling tool. The method tracks every single particle in a system to determine position as well as translational and rotational velocity of each single particle.
• Research project no. 328 which investigated the influence of mechanical agitation on heat transfer and thermo chemical processes within particle assemblies through experiments and numerical simulation. Therefore the DEM code was coupled to a commercial CFD code for the surrounding combustion air enabling a detailed analysis of heat transfer and thermochemical processes within particle assemblies on grate firing systems.
• Research project no. 377 investigated the impact of mechanical agitation and local cooling on the thermal conversion of non-spherical fuel particles. The aim was to implement the influence of operational parameters (stoking rate, heat extraction, air flow) and physical fuel properties (particle geometry, local bulk porosity) on the combustion of non-spherical fuels in grate firing systems into the CFD/DEM simulation tool.

English excerpts of all three final reports are now available.

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Bottlenecks of the German Energiewende - Technology Readiness Levels 2018

Mature technologies for direct or indirect usage of renewable intermittent energy sources are commercially available in the megawatt scale. But the corresponding energy storage capacity amounts to terawatt hours. Only chemical storages potentially provide this magnitude. And the required total power capacity for complementary conversion technologies for provisioning other energy sectors is in the two-digit gigawatt range.

TRLs of power-to-chemicals

These are the basic results of the comprehensive study Transformation of the German energy system - Towards photovoltaic and wind power - Technology Readiness Levels 2018 carried out by Christoph Pieper and supported by the VGB Scientific Advisory Board. The study applies the scale of a technology as one important criterion for assessment of its maturity. A summary is provided in the VGB PowerTech Journal.

New power plants in Europe: Update September 2019

The survey on new power plants in Europe comprises plants in planning and under construction covering different energy sources. Based on this excel sheet, the planned total output (MW) and the portions of the sources of energy (MW) can be determined.

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Abstracts of Minutes

• Fuel Technology and Firing Systems - 5 December 2018
• Power Plants Concepts - 13/14 November 2018

VGB PowerTech Journal 8 (2019): VGB Congress 2019; Innovation in Power Generation

Editorial

Dr. Hans Bünting and Dr. Oliver Then

Welcoming address to the VGB Congress 2019 - Innovation in Power Generation

Some topics:

• Perspective development of electricity generation in Europe (Stefan Ulreich and Hans-Wilhelm Schiffer) Download ...
• Hydropower – Tendering and awarding of contracts (VGB PowerTech)
• Transformation of the German energy system Technology Readiness Levels 2018 (Christoph Pieper and Michael Beckmann) Download ...
• AI diagnosis for maintenance teams: Building of a Digital Twin (Inès Allard de Grandmaison, Laurent Muszynski and Aurélien Schwartz)

Issue PT Journal 8/2019

Electricity Generation - Facts and Figures 2019/2020

An update of Electricity Generation - Facts and Figures 2018/2019 is published. Since 2003, this VGB publication informs about facts and trends in electricity generation. The topics of the current issue are:

• Electricity Demand Worldwide and in the EU
• Renewables (RES) in the EU
• Hydro power, wind energy, biomass
• Distributed power, Storage technologies
• Flexible conventional power plants
• Framework for conventional power plants
• Nuclear Power Worldwide
• Small modular reactors
• New power generation capacities needed
• Global Climate Policy Needed
• VGB: Activities and Members

The edition 2018/2019 is available for download in English and German language now. You can order the printed version in the VGB Shop . Single copies are available for free.

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VGB PowerTech Journal 7 (2019): Hydropower plants; Chemistry

Editorial

Dr. Oliver Then

VGB100

Some topics:

• Notes on the construction and operation of hydropower plant components – Introduction (VGB TC Hydro and TG Components of Hydro Power Plants) Download ...
• Farewell to coal – Expropriation or common good? (Hans-Peter Schwintowski)
• Microbiological consideration of piping-systems concerning the contamination with micro-organisms and the use of modified polymers (Klaus Hoffmann) Download ...
• Leakage assessment in leak-before-break analysis (Klaus Heckmann and Jürgen Sievers)
• Operating experience with nuclear power plants 2018 – Update (VGB PowerTech) Download ...

Issue PT Journal 7/2019

VGB-S-002-03-2016-08 - Technical and Commercial Key Indicators for Power Plants - is now available in French!

Apart from investment cost, fuel and running cost determine the economic success of power plant operation. In this respect availability is playing a very important part. It is an indicator for assessing the technical and economic potential and capacity as well as the reliability of a plant and reflects the advances in technology and engineering.

The guideline at hand contains the terms, definitions, technical profiles as well as recording and calculation rules necessary for determining availability.

A continuous revision of this standard is provided by the international ‘Performance Indicators’ technical group. This VGB Standard as well as the exercise booklet, which contains practical examples, has been translated into French. Thus, the VGB-Standards are available in German, English and French.

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Call for Abstracts: Digitalization in Hydropower 2020 - Implemented innovative digital measures, products and tools

The 3^rd international VGB expert event will focus on providing a comprehensive overview of digitalization in hydropower dealing mainly with implemented innovative digital measures, products and tools with the topics:

• Innovative tools for workforce management
• Digital maintenance measures
• Advanced data analytics and performance optimisation
• Practical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning
• Environmental performance and geo-information systems

Become part of the VGB Expert Event "Digitalization in Hydropower 2020" and create actively an attractive and interesting programme. Submit an abstract for a presentation by November 11, 2019.

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Call for Papers: Steam Turbines and Operation of Steam Turbines 2020

This biennial event is addressed to all manufacturers, planners, operators, insurers and all professionals, researchers and decision-makers interested in technology and its environment.

The main issues are:

• Damage caused by standstill, load change, partial load
• Quality assurance in new construction and revision
• Operating experience with new technologies
• Operation and overhaul of industrial steam turbines
• New concepts for maintenance and repair
• “Energiewende” (Energy transition): Opportunities and possibilities for the steam turbine
• Digitization in maintenance

Paper submission is open now. The deadline for proposing lectures is 10 January 2012.

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