The delivery of a gas turbine doesn’t normally make the news. But the Siemens 9000HL model that arrived last week to the Keadby2 combined-cycle power plant in the U.K. is something special. Weighing in at just under 1.1 million pounds (497,000 kilograms), it’ll rotate 3,000 times a minute and generate 593 megawatts of power at peak, likely for decades. It’s the pinnacle of today’s combustion technologies. and—in Europe at least—it’s probably one of the last of its kind.
Combined-cycle plants run two turbines almost constantly. Peaker plants, which come online only during moments when demand for power threatens to outstrip supply, are simpler and designed to run less frequently, with faster startup times.
On a net additions basis—the total capacity of plants built in a given year minus the capacity that’s being retired—Europe’s combined-cycle gas fleet is already shrinking. New capacity is being built, but more old capacity is coming offline every year. Peaker plants have several decades of growth ahead, and their market doesn’t peak (pardon the pun) until 2040.
Peakers Peak Later
Europe gas-fired power plant net additions
Source: BloombergNEF New Energy Outlook 2019
The global picture is a bit more balanced. Combined-cycle gas plants will meet growing electricity demand in many markets outside Europe, however by mid-decade they’ll constitute a smaller market than peaker plants in net addition terms. That will continue to taper off from the mid-2030s through 2050, according to BloombergNEF’s Energy Outlook 2019.