Energy Department announces intent to fund research and development of advanced coal plant technologies
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) said Wednesday that it plans to fund competitive research and development (R&D) efforts in Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 to advance future coal generation technologies.
Through the Coal FIRST (Flexible, Innovative, Resilient, Small, Transformative) initiative, DOE plans to issue three competitively-funded R&D efforts in FY 2019. These efforts may ultimately culminate in the design, construction, and operation of a coal-based pilot-scale power plant.
“The Coal FIRST initiative will make coal-fired power plants in the future more adaptive to the modern electrical grid,” the DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory said in a news release. “The initiative will integrate early-stage R&D on power plant components with currently available technologies into a first-of-a-kind system. Through innovative technologies and advanced approaches to design and manufacturing, the initiative will look beyond today’s utility-scale power plant concepts (e.g., base-load units) in ways that integrate with the electrical grid in the United States and internationally.”
DOE is expected to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) this month seeking conceptual designs for coal-based power plants and an option to conduct a preliminary front-end engineering design.
In the second quarter of FY 2019, DOE expects to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for cost-shared research and development R&D projects that focus on steam turbines that could be integrated into a 50-350 megawatt (MW) advanced coal plant design.
In the third quarter of FY 2019, DOE expects to issue an FOA for cost-shared R&D projects focused on critical components and advanced approaches needed to support a future coal plant. The FOA is expected to have two closings, the first of which will be informed by the conceptual designs completed under contracts awarded under the RFP. The second closing will be informed by the Pre-FEED studies completed under contracts awarded under the RFP.
