GE Supplies Turnkey Powerplant to Australia, New Solar Manufacturing in Ohio, and Mazda’s One-Size-Fits-All Platform Strategy

This Week in Engineering explores the latest in Engineering from academia, government and industry.

Episode Summary:

General Electric has announced an Australian project to supply a turnkey powerplant with unique multifuel capability. The gas turbine plant will be capable of operating on natural gas and hydrogen blends, with hydrogen enrichment ranging from 5% to 100%. The novel powerplant will be supported by state and federal programs and the power utility has committed to purchasing green hydrogen gas with the goal of full decarbonization by 2050. 

First Solar is a grid scale photovoltaic manufacturer that specializes in cadmium telluride thin-film technology. The company has announced a huge 1.2 million square-foot factory to be built in Ohio to manufacture the modules using advanced automation, machine to machine communication and the Industrial Internet of Things to ultimately make modules a rate of one every three seconds. The investment comes at a time when continued importation of Chinese made crystalline silicon modules is uncertain. 

Mazda has traditionally done things differently in the automotive industry, and the firm’s new implementation of the company’s long-range plan, Sustainable Zoom- Zoom 2030, uses a daring approach: a common platform for hybrids, plug-in hybrids and EV’s.  

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series. 

Transcript of this week’s show:

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and/or videos to which the transcript may be referring, watch the above video.

Segment 1: Hydrogen has long been the fuel of choice for fuel cell power generation, reacting to produce simple water vapour, but fuel cells aren’t the only way to generate clean energy with nature’s lightest element. It can also be burned in conventional combustion processes, and that’s something that General Electric has developed with a new dual fuel gas turbine technology for electricity generation. The company has announced a customer pilot project at the Tallawarra B Power Station in New South Wales, Australia. The project aims to accelerate the clean energy transition “down under” by using hydrogen and hydrogen-blended fuels. The plant will use an advanced version of GE’s F-class large turbine technology for 50 Hz applications that can burn hydrogen blended with natural gas in concentrations from 5% by volume up to 100% hydrogen. The project will be largely turnkey, and GE will supply the generator, exhaust stack with a plume dispersion device, step up transformers, control systems and gas turbine accessories, packaged in modules. The unit will operate as a peaker plant, reacting rapidly when needed to stabilize the power grid on demand, and was ordered as part of a Australian federal government initiative to find alternate solutions for 1000 MW of dispatchable power. This capacity is especially needed with the upcoming closure of a 1680 MW coal-fired power station. Federal and state governments have contributed $83 million to the project, and EnergyAustralia, a large, privately owned power utility, will buy green hydrogen up to 5% of the plant’s fuel use from 2025, and will offset direct carbon emissions from the project over its operational life. EnergyAustralia expects to retail entirely carbon neutral electric power by 2050.  
  

Segment 2: Photovoltaics are dominated by Asian manufacturers, particularly China, but that market dominance may be changing. Tempe Arizona based First Solar has announced that the grid scale photovoltaic manufacturer will invest $680 million on a new manufacturing facility in Ohio, the company’s third, joining facilities in Vietnam and Malaysia. The Lake Township, Ohio facility will be large, 1,800,000 ft.²  and is expected to employ 500. Most photovoltaic production is made by cutting thin wafers from grown very pure silicon crystals, but first solar uses a different technology. The company’s thin-film technology uses a layer of cadmium telluride about 3% the thickness of a human hair, applied with a vapor deposition process. Cadmium telluride technology when deployed in grid scale installations is the only thin-film technology that is cost competitive with traditional crystalline silicon in photovoltaics. Thin-film technology has a low carbon footprint, and the known toxicity of cadmium is addressed with a recycling system that recovers 90% of the compound for reuse in new modules. The company will use Industry 4.0 architecture, AI, and Industrial Internet of Things connectivity to produce one module approximately every two and three-quarter seconds when the facility is running at design speed. The timing of the announcement dovetails nicely with the Biden Administration’s stated goal of significant Federal aid in clean energy deployment, coupled with uncertain supply chain issues post Covid with Chinese panels, and the possibility of politically driven economic sanctions against China. State-of-the-art automation should make the operation cost competitive with First Solar’s operations in Asia. With an ultimate annual capacity of 3.3 GW, the new factory is expected to begin production in the first half of 2023. 

Segment 3: Mazda Motor Corporation is not traditionally the first brand that comes to mind when thinking about green automotive technology, but it is known for technological independence relative to other major Japanese automakers. As the only major manufacturer to mass-produce Wankel rotary engine vehicles after NSU in Germany, Mazdas have always been different, and the company’s new approach to a low carbon footprint follows that tradition. The new corporate strategy, originally outlined in 2017 and called “Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030”, and yes, that is what it’s called, will accelerate the company’s use of connectivity and advanced driver assistance. But the truly significant and different part of the strategy is the use of what Mazda calls SKYACTIV Multi-Solution Scalable Architecture. All major manufacturers use common platforms to reduce development costs and enjoy economies of scale while producing multiple models, but the current conventional wisdom is that EV’s require unique platforms for maximum efficiency. The Mazda system goes in the opposite direction, using a common platform for a wide variety of different propulsion systems, including internal combustion engines, and surprisingly, engines mounted both transversely and longitudinally in the chassis. The new architecture will consist of five hybrids, five plug-in hybrids, and three EV’s rolling out globally between 2022 and 2025. Between 2025 and 2030, the company expects to launch several pure electric vehicles with a separate, scalable platform. The goal is to have 100% of products with some level of electrification by 2030, with 25% of the product mix being pure EV. The use of a single platform for conventional hybrids, plug-in hybrids and EV’s is very unusual, and runs contrary to the current industry thinking that battery and drivetrain placement must dictate platform architecture in all but mild hybrid applications. There is risk to this strategy. If battery prices fall notably, and charging infrastructure increases rapidly, the demand for hybrids may drop quickly. On the other hand, if factors such as battery raw material supply, electrical grid capacity issues and poor charging infrastructure, particularly in cities remain a factor, plug-in hybrids with a small, high-efficiency internal combustion engine may be the right product at the right time. Can the company that made the Wankel engine work make a truly one-size-fits-all automotive platform? We’ll know soon. 

Written by

James Anderton

Jim Anderton is the Director of Content for ENGINEERING.com. Mr. Anderton was formerly editor of Canadian Metalworking Magazine and has contributed to a wide range of print and on-line publications, including Design Engineering, Canadian Plastics, Service Station and Garage Management, Autovision, and the National Post. He also brings prior industry experience in quality and part design for a Tier One automotive supplier.