The company’s onshore wind turbine revenues came in at $2.445 billion for the quarter, which ended September 30. That was down from $3.047 billion for the same quarter a year earlier.

For the first nine months of the year, onshore wind turbine revenue was $6.403 billion. That was down from $8.048 billion a year earlier.

Across the company’s entire renewable energy business, GE reported a quarterly loss of $934 million. That was wider than the $151 million loss recorded over the same period in 2021. For the first nine months of 2022, business segment losses were $1.786 billion. That was a wider loss from the $484 million loss recorded over the first three quarters of 2021.

The company said that equipment revenues during the quarter were down, primarily in its renewable energy business, due to fewer onshore wind turbine, and its power business, due to decreases in gas-powered HA turbine and aeroderivative deliveries, and decreases in steam power equipment on the decline of new-build coal.

Cost inflation

In its third-quarter filing with federal securities regulators, the company said it had experienced “significant cost inflation” in materials and logistics costs across the entire business and said those factors impacted both rice and customer demand.

It also said that based on experience across its onshore wind turbine fleet, it was deploying “repairs and other corrective measures” to improve overall fleet quality and availability. The repair move led to higher warranty and related reserves during the quarter. 

GE also said it was restructuring its onshore wind business to operate in fewer markets and “simplify and standardize product variants.” 

It cited “significant demand” for larger turbines that reduce the levelized cost of energy, and pointed to its 5 MW Cypress and 3 MW Sierra onshore units, as well as its 12-14 MW Haliade-X offshore units. GE said it expects to start shipping Haliade-X units for its first commercial project during the fourth quarter.

Gas generation’s ‘critical role’

On the power side of its business, GE reported third quarter revenues of $3.529 billion. That was down from $4.026 billion a year earlier. Through the first three quarters of 2022, power segment revenues were $11.233 billion, down from $12.242 billion a year earlier.

Its earnings filing said that during the nine months ended September 30, global gas generation grew in the “mid-single digits” with the greatest demand for its products coming from Europe and the U.S. 

It said the fleet continues to follow growing gas generation, capturing what it said are shortfalls from nuclear outages, coal retirements and hydro and supply disruptions. 

It cautioned, however, that the power market will likely continue to suffer from overcapacity, continued price pressure to service the installed generating base, and the “uncertain timing of deal closures” due to financing and other complexities of working in emerging markets. It said the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 also are a factor weighing on results. 

GE said that while greater renewable energy penetration and the adoption of climate change-related policies continue to impact long-term demand, it “expect the gas market to remain stable over the next decade with gas generation continuing to grow low-single-digits.” 

It said, “We believe gas will play a critical role in the energy transition.” 

Turning to the company’s grid solutions business, GE said it is “securing our position in the high growth offshore interconnection market” with products aimed at meeting the 2 GW high voltage direct current standard and developing new technology such as flexible transformers and eco-friendly switchgears.

GE and EDF signed an exclusive agreement for EDF to acquire part of GE Steam Power’s nuclear power business.

The deal would bring together GE’s nuclear steam turbine technology and boost French-based EDF’s commitment to the nuclear power sector.

In sync with the deal announcement, French President Enamel Macron said his country will build at least six new nuclear reactors in the decades to come. He effectively placed nuclear power at the core of France's push for carbon neutrality by 2050.

Macron said the new plants would be built and operated by government-controlled EDF and that tens of billions of euros in public financing would be used to finance the projects and safeguard EDF's finances.

EDF previously has estimated the cost of six new reactors at about $60 billion, depending on financing conditions. The first new reactor, an evolution of the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), would come online by 2035, Macron said on February 10. Studies for a further eight reactors beyond the initial half-dozen new plants would be launched.

Last September we highlighted reports about GE potentially selling its nuclear turbine business to EDF. The companies have long partnered on nuclear power projects. More than three years ago, GE and EDF signed a strategic cooperation agreement for the planned construction of six reactors in India.

Included in the transaction would be GE Steam Power’s conventional island equipment for new nuclear power plants, including the Arabelle turbine, along with associated technology for future nuclear plants, like the next generation of EPRs and small modular reactors (SMRs). 

Activities involved in the deal are based in about 15 countries, GE said, with nearly 70% of the workforce in France, including at GE Steam Power manufacturing sites like Belfort and La Courneuve.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but GE Steam Power’s nuclear turbines business has been estimated at a value of around $1.2 billion, according to previous reports.

GE said it plans to retain services of more than 100 GW of plant activities in North America. GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) plans to deploy Canada's first commercial, grid-scale SMR. In December, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) selected GEH to supply the BWRX-300 SMR for the Darlington New Nuclear Project. Darlington is the only site in Canada currently licensed for a new nuclear build and could be completed as early as 2028.

GE’s nuclear steam turbines are installed in half of the world's nuclear power plants, including all of EDF’s nuclear plants in France.

In early January, EDF said that the Flamanville 3 reactor would likely cost 300 million euros ($343 million) more than forecast and that fuel loading was being pushed back by up to six months. The project is more than a decade late and could cost 12.7 billion euros ($14.42 billion). Its expected cost has more than quadrupled from the first estimate made in 2004.

The company’s Autonomous Tuning software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to build a digital twin model of a gas turbine to find optimal flame temperatures and fuel splits. GE said the technology will help reduce emissions and fuel consumption.

The software is designed to sense changes in ambient temperature, gas fuel properties and degradation before sending adjustments to the controls every two seconds. The goal is to allow tracking of the turbine’s “sweet spot” with low emissions and acoustics in response to environmental conditions or physical degradation.

Gas turbines require seasonal adjustments to their flame temperature and fuel splits, generally performed manually after an outage and expected to take a few days to finish. With the new software, GE said this work would be done automatically.

The software applies to any original equipment manufacturer gas turbine and also is bounded by the turbine control system’s safety-critical programming” to help ensure it does not harm the turbine. GE said that power generators that might benefit most from the technology are in highly regulated regions or those with constrained emissions, such as Europe, the United States and Canada, or in any location that does not have consistent weather patterns.

GE said plants using the software have recorded carbon dioxide reductions between 0.5%-1.0%, carbon monoxide reductions of 14% and nitrous oxide reductions of 10%-14%.

The company said it expects software users to have a lower total cost of ownership, and more operational flexibility with their turbines. It said that added improved productivity from the turbines can result in payback in under one year.

Grid-forming technologies provide functions that are traditionally provided by synchronous machinery. They allow solar and other inverter-based energy sources to restart the electric grid independently.

In grid-forming mode, a generator can set grid voltage, frequency and, if necessary, operate without power from the grid. This includes the ability to restart power following an outage, restabilize after a transient electrical event and to generally form the grid as baseline power resources.

Instead of large, traditional spinning generators, inverter-based resources like wind, solar, and batteries are being primed for this role in multiple U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) projects. As renewables make up a larger share of the power supply, they will also need to take on more responsibility as stewards of grid stability and reliability.

In this particular demonstration, GE and NREL teams deployed controls for the 2.5 MW Type-3 wind turbine to provide primary frequency and voltage support, restabilizing the surrounding grid by adjusting its power in response to momentary electrical variances.

Researchers said Type-3 turbines are especially complex for developing grid-forming controls. These turbines use a generator that is directly connected to the grid, with the turbines’ electricity output controlled by power electronics components. Grid-forming controls could allow the turbine to make up for fewer conventional sources of stability on the grid, such as natural gas-fired generators.

A 5 MW research dynamometer served as prime mover in the mock power system, allowing the researchers to emulate different grid dynamics and observe the turbine’s performance. The team found that with GE’s grid-forming controls, the turbine can contribute inertial and phase jump power in similar ways as a synchronous machine, which is a key feature to adding stability to the grid.

NREL used Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (AIRES), an energy systems integration platform which allows at-scale experimentation in a replica grid environment. AIRES is a step-up from previous platforms, allowing for research at the 20 MW level. Helping to power and scale up the technology is NREL’s 8-petaflop supercomputer.

“In this work we have found that the grid-forming turbine serves underlying stability in cases where it’s needed: in systems with many inverter-based resources and few conventional forms of stability,” said NREL Chief Engineer Vahan Gevorgian.

Such capabilities are generally not available with grid-following controls in today’s inverter-based resources, which rely on externally generated voltages by synchronous machines to operate. Grid-following technologies, which exist in most solar plants and battery storage systems, typically produce power that closely follows the grid frequency and voltage of the larger electric system. With grid-following, inverters will shut off power when there is a large disturbance or outage on the grid and wait for a signal that the disturbance has settled and it is safe to restart.

The GE-NREL effort is the first of several federally funded wind technology demonstrations as part of the Energy Technologies Office project, “Wind as a Virtual Synchronous Generator,” which aims to research wind and storage inverter controls that electronically imitate conventional generators. Research teams will continue to study how the grid-forming turbine interacts with other devices on the power system and whether the grid-forming mode results in greater mechanical stress on the turbine.

In the 2020 Research Roadmap on Grid-Forming Inverters, researchers from NREL, universities, and the DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office outlined a plan to use renewable energy to jump-start the grid by taking advantage of inverters, which provide the interface between the grid and energy sources like solar panels, wind turbines, and energy storage.

Researchers noted in the report that inverter controls now are predominantly grid-following and that future power systems will involve a mix of inverter-based resources with both grid-following and grid-forming control capabilities. Growth over time will depend on how well grid-forming inverters perform and what advantages they bring as penetration levels of inverter-based resources increases, the researchers said.

They recommended the “review of regulatory and technical standards and the development of advanced modeling techniques” for grid-forming inverters.

GE Power Digital solutions, Asset Performance Management (APM), Operations Optimization and Business Optimization grant power executives greater reliability, productivity and profitability across the plant and across the fleet.  GE Cyber solutions specifically designed for the OT operating environment provide a defense against security attacks.  GE Advanced Controls bring unique capabilities for fast ramp starts, fuel variation management and peak performance, while controlling emissions.

GE is leading the digital transformation of the power industry, with opportunities for power leaders to achieve greater flexibility and success by leveraging data and analytics for a competitive advantage.