Page 18 - Piston Engine-Based Power Plants

An Introduction to Piston Engine Power Plants 11

Most of these engines are diesel engines. For engines in the next range,
500 kW to 5 MW, annual installations were also over 10,000 in the
report they were put at in the mid-10,000s whereas for the smaller size
range the numbers were in the low 10,000s while the additional
annual capacity was between 30,000 MW and 50,000 MW. Again
most of these engines burn diesel fuel.

The next size category, 5 10 MW, has many fewer engines installed
each year with numbers somewhere in the low 100s. The majority of
these engines were natural gas engines and annual additional capacity
was between 1000 MW and 5000 MW. The largest engines, with gener-
ating capacities of between 10 MW and 50 MW, generally burn heavy
fuel oil although some have dual fuel capability. More than 100 of
these were installed each year in the period covered by the table and
annual capacity additions were 1000 5000 MW.
While diesel engines continue to dominate for power generation
there is a shift towards the clearer natural gas engines. This change is
likely to become accelerated where natural gas is readily available, as
the demand for cleaner power generation becomes more insistent.
However there are still many regions where natural gas is not available
and the only fuel option is diesel.