Turbines

Duke Energy Corp. announced a plan this week to significantly expand a large natural gas-fired peaking facility in North Carolina to serve as a proving ground for a single-cycle combustion turbine that Siemens Corp. wants to build and test there.

General Electric (GE) continues to build its capabilities in the natural gas turbine market, announcing Monday it would buy privately held Metem Corp.

An Irvine, CA-based company is touting a licensing agreement with a Dresser-Rand Group unit that makes small turbines as opening the door for smaller, decentralized power generation using otherwise unusable waste gas.

A combination of coal’s retreat in power generation and booming natural gas supplies led by U.S. shales is driving up the market for natural gas and steam turbines worldwide, according to a report from the global consulting firm Frost & Sullivan (F&S).

Appalachian operator EQT Corp. and the oilfield services company Green Field Energy Services have completed multiple hydraulic fracturing (fracking) stages using pumps powered 100% by Marcellus Shale gas at a well site.

Rapid City, SD-based Black Hills Corp. will sell its 40 MW natural gas-fired “CT II” generation unit at its mostly coal-fired Gillette Energy Complex in Wyoming to the City of Gillette for $22 million.

Connecting wellheads — particularly those in shale gas fields — to gas-fired turbines and burner tips will require billions in spending on midstream infrastructure over the next 25 years, according to a new report. Adding to the projected demand for new pipe, storage and other facilities is the increasing focus on liquids-rich gas production.

With local opposition cropping up against everything from offshore wind turbines to transmission lines, New England’s “severe case of NIMBYism” is a key challenge for the region, the head of ISO New England (ISO-NE) noted last week.

Thanks to a new deal with CMS Energy’s Panhandle EasternPipeline Co., three FirstEnergy gas turbines in Defiance, OH, willenjoy a 15-year supply of gas. The agreement makes FirstEnergyPanhandle’s seventh power plant customer.