Abstract
The Gas Technology Institute (GTI®), Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) and General Electric Global Research (GE-GR) are executing the Supercritical Transformational Electric Power, “STEP” project, to design, construct, commission, and operate an integrated and reconfigurable 10 MWe sCO2 [supercritical CO2] Pilot Plant Test Facility. The $156* million project is funded $115 million by the US DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL Award Number DE-FE0028979) and $41* million by the team members, component suppliers, and Joint Industry Program (JIP) members. The facility is currently under final assembly and is located at SwRI’s San Antonio, Texas, USA campus. This project is a significant step toward sCO2 cycle based power generation commercialization and is informing the performance, operability, and scale-up to commercial plants.
Significant progress has been made on this STEP project. The design phase is complete (Phase 1) and included procurements of long-lead time delivery components. Now well into Phase 2, a ground-breaking was held in 2018, and civil work and the construction of a dedicated 22,000 ft2 building was completed in 2020. Most major equipment is in final fabrication or delivered to site as of the end of 2021. These efforts have already provided valuable project learnings for technology commercialization. At time of paper writing most equipment has been received and installed, and commissioning will begin in the first half of 2022. An update on commissioning and experience with sCO2 equipment is given here-in.
