Power Gen 2012: Our Review

VMA President Bill Sandler, who manned the VMA booth, reported that members were largely pleased with this year's Power-Gen. There was no shortage of visitors at the booth, and Bill handed out several hundred issues of VALVE Magazine and Valve Catalogs. He also fielded a number of membership inquiries.

Marc Pasternak, VMA Vice-President and VRC Executive Director, reported that the event was very well attended this year. He said, “It has become so popular that it has outgrown the Las Vegas Convention Center. Therefore, it will be back in Orlando again next year.”

Rich Oaks of AUMA Actuators said the company had not exhibited at the event in 14 years but came back this year to launch a new product--and were very glad they returned. Alan Veteto of ValvTechnologies remarked there was a lot of traffic, with visitors representing many countries: "We were really pleased." Another member said his company was asked by prospects to submit several RFPs.

The organizer, Penn-Well Corp., reported that there were nearly 22,000 attendees and 1,400 exhibitors at the event which included exhibits of products, services and technologies in generation, renewable energy and nuclear power. Co-located with the event were Renewable Energy World North America Conference & Expo, NUCLEAR POWER International and the Financial Forum.

Echoing observations from the VMA Market Outlook event in August, 2012 wherein regulatory, economic and technological challenges for the market were addressed by Kevin Geraghty, VP of Power Generation for NV Energy, the keynote panel for Power-Gen began the event with the topic, "The Challenge Ahead”.

The keynote speakers included Gordon Gillette, president of Tampa Electric & Peoples Gas; Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; E. James Ferland, president and CEO of The Babcock & Wilcox Company; Paul Browning, president & CEO of Thermal Products; and VADM Dennis V. McGinn (USN, Retired), president of the American Council on Renewable Energy. They reported that, while there are indeed challenges in the future of power generation, several new nuclear power projects are underway, including two new generating units at Summer, and there are huge advances in the technology to reduce emissions for fossil-fuel generating stations.

Conference topics included CO2 abatement technologies, gas turbine technologies, plant performance, distributed generation, energy storage, heat recovery steam generators and much more. One of the presenters was Jeff Brown of Pangea Global, who discussed international developments in shale gas and LNG. Look forward to an article by Mr. Brown in VALVE Magazine in 2013.

Among the papers presented at the conference was one by Steven Harper, General Manager of Life Cycle Engineering for GE’s Power Generation Services. It offered a novel approach to improving the mid-point efficiency of combined cycle power plants. Mike Borgstadt, Manager, Resource Planning at Burns & McDonnell, delivered a paper considering the impact coal-fired power plant retirements will have on natural gas delivery.

The 25th anniversary of POWER-GEN will be held November 12-14, 2013 with POWER-GEN International, NUCLEAR POWER International, Renewable Energy World North America Conference & Expo and POWER-GEN Financial Forum converging to formally present POWER GENERATION WEEK.

Kate Kunkel is senior editor of VALVE Magazine. You may contact her at kkunkel@vma.org