GEs Answer: The Digital Power Plant

Steam

Peter Kirk
Vincent Deborde
2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Title or
Job
Number
| XX

Steam by far main power generation source

Power installed base by
fuel (GW)
Steam
Hydro

391
374 7%
7%

2,433
43%

CC GT

SC GT
Nuclear
Wind
Solar PV

880
15%

Steam fuels
235
10%
363
15%

Coal
Gas

1,746
72%

1,098
19%

Other

Biomass
Geothermal
Solar CSP

Source: GE 2012

-15GW/y retired, +20GW/y added

Less than 200 plants out of 7000 connected globally
2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Oil

What is specific to Steam power plant?

AQCS
Air quality control system

Flue Gas Desulphurization

(FGD)

Boiler island
Pressure Parts
Firing System
Mills
Air Preheater

Fans

Wet FGD (Flue gas desulphurization)

Dry FGD
Seawater FGD

Particulate Control
Fabric Filter
ESP (Electrostatic Precipitators)

NOx Control
NOx control: SCR systems (Selective
Catalytic Reduction, low-NOx burners)

Mercury Control

Turbine Island

Steam turbine
Generator
Condensers/heaters

Coal handling
Ash handling
Fly ashes
Bottom ashes

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Few other characteristics about Steam power plant?

From few MW to 1200MW boilers

Pulverized Coal (PC)

Circulating fluidized bed (CFB)

Various steam parameters

Up to 35% eff.

Various coal grades

- Hard coal
- Sub-bituminous
- Lignite
Ash & moisture content

Up to 45% efficiency

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Client
Asks

Improved Availability
Improved Efficiency
Reduced Emissions (CO2, NOx, SOx, Hg,
Particulates)

More operational flexibility to handle

Cyclic Operation
and an overall lower cost ownership:
OPEX, maintenance costs

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

So what are the Steam customer operational problems?

Reliability
Maintenance costs

Reliability: Boiler tube leaks,

Mills, APH leaks, Water
chemistry, AQCS, ST valves,

Erosion: tubes, APH, firing

systems

Outage management

Malfunctioning censors

Efficiency & emission

Fuel variation: calorific/

ash/moisture content

More stringent emission

regulation: NOx, SOx, PM, Hg

Tuning: Boiler, mills, firing

system, Soot, clinkering,
fouling.

AQCS reagent consumption:

limestone, ammonia, urea

Degraded efficiency vs PAC

Flexibility

Load ramp design limitations &

ST lifetime impact

From base-load to part load or

load following: more cold or
warm startup
-

Reduce startup sequence

Transient modes: LSB

flattering, auxiliaries mgt
(FWP, CWP)

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

6

BoilerOpt

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

7

The Coal Generation Environment and

Why Is It a Big Opportunity?

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Key Power Market Drivers

Reliability / availability
Fuel efficiency
Environmental regulations
Human expertise is scarce

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Why Target Coal Fired Generation?

Coal generation is STILL core to emerging and developed markets
Challenges with coal:
Operational / maintenance / environmental
Complex hardware and control; fractured vendor base
High degree of human influence on the process
The value of improved performance is high
Processing coal is a nightmare, downstream complications are huge
Large gap between current performance and a digitally optimized state
On- design and in tune operations almost never exist

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Coal fired boilers are complex

Sorbent Injection
Thermal Performance

Equipment Reliability

Electrostatic Precipitator (ESP)

Fuel Systems

Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR)

/ Selective Non-Catalytic
Reduction (SNCR)

Mills

Sootblowing Operations
Combustion Process

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Flue Gas Desulfurization (FGD)

Boiled down: BoilerOpt ROI is strong

A 1% Heat Rate benefit = $1M
Six month payback
SootOpt hits an emotional driver
Tube leaks cause 50% of unplanned outages in coal
Everyone loses and no one can control

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

With the addition of NeuCo Inc., GE has new

Product Offerings!

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

NeuCos Coal Generation Offering

BoilerOpt
CombustionOpt

SootOpt

Optimizes fuel and air mixing Dynamically directs boiler cleaning

to reduce emissions and
actions to achieve unit reliability,
improve efficiency
efficiency and emissions goals
ProcessLink Platform

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

BoilerOpt
Makes coal fleet accessible to Predix
Makes coal plants more reliable / available, more efficient
and less polluting
Produces a clearly demonstrable ROI
Is a hardened industrial application
120 active product instances in the market
Repeatable and scalable installation process
Strong customer acceptance

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

BoilerOpt
Applies AI optimization in a real-time closed-loop application

Integrates now silo-ed fuel / air and sootblowing management

The same brain operates 24 X 7 X 365
Integrates directly into plant control
Provides analytics on premise and to remote users

BoilerOpt is sticky

Does things that human operators know they cant do

Does things that human operators know they cant do well
Becomes part of the way the plant operates not just analytics
Makes real time plant operating data to a wide team of experts

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Neural Fuel / Air Optimization

~11% NOx Reduction at

Steady Load
and Constant O2 Trim Bias

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

What Is the Value Proposition?

What Outcomes Are We Selling?

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

BoilerOpt Benefits
ROI driven by

Control CO to desired limit

Increase Boiler efficiency 0.75% - 1%
Reduce soot blowing 20% - 30%
Reduce NOx 10-15%
Fewer unplanned outages

Intangible benefits
Maintains sweet-spot operations
Frees operators to focus on higher level issues
Site, country specific benefits

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

DTE Belle River Unit 2 Problem History

Imbalanced combustion drove high slagging
Multiple cleaning outages
Boiler operated in high excess air comfort zone to minimize slagging

High NOx, Heat Rate, CO2 emissions, etc.

But unit kept slagging

Limited boiler tuning success

Plant stuck guessing

Boiler conditions changed constantly
Constant retuning required

Opportunity to exploit available data and control

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Third Party Evaluation

Manual Tuning
Baseline
Heat Rate
Test
07/27/10
Gross Load, MW 647.954
Net Load, MW 606.641
Auxiliary Power, MW 41.313
Raw Net Unit Heat Rate (Heatloss),
BTU/kWhr 10517
Corrected Net Unit Heat Rate (Heatloss),
BTU/kWhr 10393
Net Unit Heat Rate (Input/Output),
BTU/kWhr 10493
Corrected Net Unit Heat Rate
(Input/Output), BTU/kWhr 10458
Nox, lb/MBTU 0.2513
CO, PPM
88
CO2 Intensity, Tons CO2/MWhr 1.069
Total Boiler Air Flow, klb/hr 6313
Average Excess O2, % 4.39%
Excess Air, % 30.50%

Manual
Neuco
Tuning
Tuning
Manual
Manual
Heat Rate Heat Rate Tuning
Tuning
Test
Test
Change
Change
07/28/10 07/30/10 (Absolute) (Relative, %)
647.948 645.058
-0.006
0.00%
608.604 607.743
1.964
0.32%
39.343
37.315
-1.970
-4.77%

Neuco
Tuning
Neuco Tuning
Change
Change
(Absolute) (Relative, %)
-2.896
-0.45%
1.102
0.18%
-3.998
-9.68%

10402

10331

-115

-1.10%

-186.0

-1.77%

10286

10224

-108

-1.0%

-169.184

-1.63%

10362

Not Avail.

-131

-1.25%

Not Avail.

Not Avail.

10358
0.2025
78
1.047
5926
3.23%
20.75%

Not Avail.
0.2010
157
1.043
5483
2.45%
15.12%

-100
-0.0488
-10
-0.02
-387
-1.15%
9.75%

-0.96%
-19.43%
-11.18%
-2.06%
-6.13%
-26.31%
-31.97%

Not Avail.
-0.050
68.200
-0.03
-830
-0.019
-15.38%

Not Avail.
-20.02%
77.18%
-2.43%
-13.14%
-44.18%
-50.43%

AND..SLAGGING PROBLEM SOLVED!

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Neuco Tuning

SootOpt Impact on Air Pre-Heated Gas

SootOpt Retuning

SootOpt reduced average air temperature by 15 degrees F

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

NOx Emissions Impact After Optimization

NOx Frequency Distribution- JK Spruce Unit 1
35.00%
30.00%

Percentage Time

25.00%
20.00%

May to Sept 2001

PL On - Jan-2002

15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
0.09

0.11

0.13

0.15

0.17

NOx (lb/mmbtu)

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

0.19

0.21

0.23

BoilerOpt Impact on Heat Rate

18%

Without
Optimization

18%

With
Optimization

Average = 9856.6
Average = 9799.9

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

9835 BTU/kw - HR Target

Long-Term Heat Rate Benefits at JK Spruce 1

Heat Rate

January 2003

9800

Heat Rate
9790

August 2008

9770

9750
PL Master = ON , O2 TRIM = ON
9700

PL Master = ON, O2 TRIM = OFF

PL Master = OFF

9650

9750
9730
9710
9690

9600

9670
200 to 600MW

9550
400 to 590MW

590 to 595MW

595 to 600MW

600 to 615MW

Benefits expand over time

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

COpt ON, O2 ON

COpt ON, O2 OFF

COpt OFF

APS Four Corners Heat Rate Improvement Over 7 Years

Focus on
CO/Opacity

Focus on
NOx

> 2.5% Heat Rate reduction

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Model Predictive Control (MPC) Impact on CO and NOx

CO and NOx without MPC Optimization

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

CO and NOx with MPC Optimization

Demos

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

CombustionOpt Demo Content

The Demo will show through CombustionOpt Analysis Screens, how the optimizer
minimizes NOx while controlling CO to a desired target. To do this it shows:
High NOx when the optimizer was not enabled due to a date communications issue;
Reducing NOx when the optimizer was re-enabled;
Optimizer focuses to control CO once it exceeded the 200 PPM target , while
continuing to keep NOx low.
Examples of two closed loop control settings working to optimize NOx and CO.

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Title or
Job
Number
| XX

29

What Is the Pitch and Commercial Offering?

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Digitized Optimization of Plant Operations

Reveals true plant potential performance
Expands knowledge of the operating envelope

Manual boiler and DCS tuning are valuable, but their benefits degrade
BoilerOpt provides real time dynamic response

Builds a digital understanding and representation of core plant processes that

Is indifferent to hardware and control
Builds a knowledge layer comparable to other generation
Addresses interdependencies

Interfaces with Predix cloud based analytics

Provides an immediate, measurable, monetized ROI of <1 year

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

ROI Calculator

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Benefits Flow to Entire Customer Value Chain

Existing assets, control and personnel produce better results
Addresses existing KPIs
Reveals operating options / tradeoffs
Can mitigate hardware investment
Enhances plant flexibility
Enhanced asset knowledge is fully transparent
Visible to internal SMEs, corporate engineering and commercial ops
Integrated with Predix analytics, GE M&D, GE SME Teams

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Flexible Commercial Package

Pricing reflects its hard ROI
Long term service approach
Benefits sharing is possible
Perpetual license purchase

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

What Is the Roadmap and Predix Fit?

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

On-Premise Deployment Topology

Predix

NeuCo

Customer Support
System
Support Workstations

Internet

Corporate Corporate
Network
War Room

Predix Interface

Plant 1

Workstations
Plant 2
Firewall

Plant 3

User Workstations

Plant Network
DMZ
Control Network

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Plant systems

Data
Historian

ProcessLink servers

DCS

Other controls (e.g. SBCS)

Corporate
ERP
System

NeuCo Predix Integration

CombustionOpt

SootOpt

ProcessOpt
Process Health &
Thermal Efficiency

Equipment Health &

Reliability

Optimization services
Services

Predix

ProcessLink Engine

Model Predictive Control (MPC)

Model Predictive Control (MPC)

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

Modeling services

Monitoring services

Adaptive Neural Networks

1st Principles Models

AI Expert Systems

Plant I&C Systems Interfaces and Network (DCS, PLC, etc)

Being Rationalized

Real-time Monitoring and Decision Support

BoilerOpt
Applications

Predix Interface

Closed-loop Systems Control & Optimization

Migration Plan
Screen Conformity
Color and graphical consistency

Code Migration
On premise software will remain on premise and be fully Predix
compatible
All cloud facing software will fully migrate to Predix

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

How to start the conversation

Objection Handling

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

46

So how do I start the conversation?

Reliability
Maintenance costs

Level of reliability?

Efficiency & emission

- How many outage due to

tube leaks per year?
- Idem for: Mills, APH,
Water chemistry, AQCS,
ST valves,

How many planned Outages

per year? Scope?

GED sales
play doc

Flexibility

Efficiency degradation

- what the HR achievement

difference btw the best &
worst performing teams

How many cold/warm/hot

start / year? How long are
they?

Would increased flexibility

/load ramp help capture more
MWh?

- How far is PAC efficiency

- How many types of coal?

Any new emission regulation?

Use of SCR?

2015 General Electric Company All rights reserved

4
7