Turboden & Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to partner closely internationally
Plant in Kirchstockach, Germany (source: Turboden)
Alexander Richter
16 Jan 2014
Following its merger with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Turboden now announces details on its close partnership for global business development for both companies providing a larger range of geothermal power plant options together.
Italian provider of ORC turbogenerators, which was acquired first by U.S.-based Pratt & Whitney and then in another deal by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group (MHI). Today, the company provided details on how it will be working together with the turbine business of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Turboden is a leading company in Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) turbogenerators, for distributed power generation employing renewable sources and waste heat, and a pioneer of ORC technology. The company will partner with its mother company MHI, in order to globally expand its geothermal portfolio.
Right after the acquisition, Turboden signed an order with MHI for a new 5 MW geothermal power plant in Japan; a sign of great commitment of this new partnership.
Turboden, as a provider of ORC technology and MHI as a world leader in installed geothermal power generation capacity, can now cover all the possible solutions required by a geothermal developer and can provide the best optimized configuration for that specific resource. Together they will stand as a fully-integrated supplier of binary and steam geothermal power-plants.
“Now that we are part of MHI, leader in geothermal systems for flash steam power plants, and we are strong in our German references“ – states Paolo Bertuzzi, General Manager Financial & Commercial of Turboden – “we intend to invest further in geothermal energy and introduce ourselves to the market as a reference player. Turboden aims to satisfy the wide range of technical solutions required, from the low enthalpy liquid dominated resources up to the higher enthalpy fields”.
Recent geothermal plants from Turboden
Between 2012 and 2013, Turboden has implemented the start-up of a state-of-the-art two-pressure level 5 MW geothermal power plant for the Munich Public Utilities Company SWM (in Sauerlach), and two other 5.6 MW plants in the same region for the leading company Hochtief Energy Management, now SPIE Group (in Dürrnhaar and Kirchstockach). These power plants have already achieved thousands of operating hours, exceeding the expected performances. Turboden is proud to demonstrate the reliability the company is known for.
A fourth geothermal plant has recently been awarded in Bavaria, like the other plants mentioned before in Germany. The 4.1 MW co-generation geothermal plant that will be installed in the city of Traunreut, will deliver, in addition to the electric power produced, up to 12 MW thermal power to the community.
Furthermore, in March 2012, an innovative 500 kWel ORC prototype operated at super-critical pressure has been successfully commissioned for Enel in Italy.
“The realization of such a prototype is further proof of the company’s commitment to innovation and performance improvement in ORC” affirms Roberto Bini, General Manager Technical Area of Turboden.
Turboden commitment on geothermal
“Turboden has always looked at geothermal energy with great interest since its origin, starting from the plant in Zambia (1988) and Altheim, that is running continuously since 2001. Currently, a great experience and new lessons learned have been reached in the last successful developments; these will be applied with continuous improvement in the next geothermal plants” declares Mario Gaia, Founder & Managing Director of Turboden.
New promising markets are under evaluation of Turboden and Mitsubishi. Both companies are globally present and, in markets like Turkey, where both the companies have references and both binary and flash-steam configurations are feasible, the capability to cover a full range of solutions is a competitive advantage.
As a demonstration of this, also an agreement for a new geothermal unit has been recently reached in Turkey.
Turboden over 30 years’ experience in the construction of ORC turbogenerators made it possible to construct units with high performance as well as high reliability and availability, together with low maintenance and operational costs. Currently there are more than 220 Turboden ORC plants in operation, featuring in-house designed turbines, and further 40 plants under construction. Turboden ORC units have demonstrated an average availability exceeding 98% and more than 5,000,000 operating hours have been reached.”
Source: Turboden release by email
