The Potential of Chemically Recuperated Power Cycles in Markets with High Shares of Variable Renewables

Rising shares of variable wind and solar generation in decarbonized electricity systems motivate the development of novel power cycles employing unconventional fuels. Innovative designs must be highly flexible and profitable at low capacity factors, requiring a simple process layout and low capital costs. Fuel supply infrastructure represents a significant additional capital cost, which is often ignored in economic assessments of gas-fired power plants. When these capital costs are included, liquid fuels such as NH3 or MeOH gain relevance despite their high production costs because they are cheap to store and distribute. In addition, chemically recuperated power cycle designs upgrade these fuels with waste heat from the gas turbine exhaust, avoiding a capital-intensive bottoming cycle while achieving high thermal efficiencies. This work presents an exergoeconomic benchmarking of different large-scale power plants and their fuel supply infrastructure. The results show that chemically recuperated cycles using MeOH become competitive relative to natural-gas-fired combined cycles with fuel storage in salt caverns at capacity factors below 32% if seven-day storage is required and plants are located 500 km from the fuel source. NH3 can compete with H2 at a higher capacity factor of 47% because of the high cost of storing H2, while a CO2 price of 140 EUR/ton is required for NH3 to outperform MeOH as a fuel. In cases where salt cavern storage is unavailable, or the energy security of multi-week fuel storage is highly valued, liquid fuels present a clearly superior solution.

Automated summary

The increasing share of wind and solar energy in decarbonized electricity systems has created a need for innovative power cycles using unconventional fuels. This study compared different large-scale power plants and their fuel supply infrastructure, specifically focusing on chemically recuperated cycles using MeOH and NH3 as fuels. The results showed that MeOH can be competitive with natural-gas-fired combined cycles at low capacity factors, while NH3 can compete with H2 at higher capacity factors. Liquid fuels present a superior solution when salt cavern storage is unavailable or multi-week fuel storage is highly valued.