Mitsubishi Heavy Industries bets big on small turbines for datacenters
- Reference: 1716964394
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/05/29/mhi_datacenter_generator_strategy/
- Source link:
The giant corp on Tuesday delivered a [1]Medium-Term Business Plan [PDF] covering the years 2024–2026 that advised investors it has decided to go all-in on the datacenter market.
MHI's last strategic plan identified datacenters as an "important megatrend" that warranted preparation for commercializing products. The new plan calls for the biz to "fully enter" the datacenter market.
[2]
That's recognition of the fact that availability of energy is widely seen as a [3]limiting factor for the operation and expansion of hyperscale facilities, leading datacenter operators to increasingly [4]provide their own power generation facilities rather than relying on the grid to keep kit humming.
[5]
[6]
MHI's approach is to build power plants designed for on-site power generation at datacenters – complete with its related cooling and energy management products.
In its strategy presentation, MHI referred to a launch of a 2.4MW electronically controlled engine for datacenters as a "business highlight" in a global market that is "rapidly expanding."
[7]
CEO Seihi Izumisawa told reporters that MHI will aim both to maintain and increase its lead across the gas turbine market.
[8]Asia's hyperscalers hustle for juice as datacenters drain grid
[9]Microsoft's carbon emissions up nearly 30% thanks to AI
[10]Mitsubishi gives up on Japan's first domestically manufactured passenger jet
[11]Datacenters looking to renewables, nuclear, and gas, in quest for more power
Although MHI is eyeing up new uses for traditional turbines, it's not abandoning the industries that put it on the map – like aerospace or mega-scale power plants. Nor is it reducing its exploration of renewable energy.
Hydrogen was also identified in the last mid-term plan as a "future growth area" and MHI sees demand for hydrogen and ammonia combustion continuing to ramp up over the next few years.
It revealed that it has now validated using 100 percent hydrogen and ammonia in small gas turbines, while bigger machines will use them for half their fuel. By 2030, MHI reckons it can provide large turbines running only on hydrogen.
Hydrogen is typically produced by electrolysis – passing electricity through water. If the electricity used in that process comes from renewable sources, datacenter-adjacent generators would deliver solid sustainability credentials to their operators.
[12]
The Japanese corporation predicted a healthy revenue increase of 20 percent across the period FY23 to FY26, accompanied by 60 percent profit growth in the same period. ®
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[1] https://www.mhi.com/finance/library/plan/pdf/240528presentation.pdf
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zlb8yDUIzb-PPchRtKhNswAAAMs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/09/asia_hyperscaler_power_shortages/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/datacenter_power_demands/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zlb8yDUIzb-PPchRtKhNswAAAMs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zlb8yDUIzb-PPchRtKhNswAAAMs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zlb8yDUIzb-PPchRtKhNswAAAMs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/09/asia_hyperscaler_power_shortages/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/microsoft_co2_emissions/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/07/mitsubishi_spacejet_officially_dead/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/datacenter_power_demands/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zlb8yDUIzb-PPchRtKhNswAAAMs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: recursion
A nescronym - a nested acronym
Hydrogen is typically produced by electrolysis – passing electricity through water.
So now we need to site data centres somewhere there's stacks of available renewable energy next door plus an abundant supply of water to be smashed. Oooh, ooh ... and nowhere that they can be flooded or a tsunami can hit, etc, natch. This should be interesting to watch.
Wonder how the cost of energy stacks up for customers
I can see that Mitsubishi will sell whatever customers want to buy. But if they're proposing on site/nearsite gas turbines, driven by hydrogen or hydrogen mix, then customers have the cost and efficiency losses of a hydrogen CCGT. They also need to build gas infrastructure, since for most DCs bulk hydrogen compatible gas connections won't be readily available locally, and that has its own operating costs and new losses. Then there's the whole "where does the hydrogen come from?" which involves some form of power to gas infrastructure, meaning they need to build the generating infrastructure, maintain and operate, compress and store the gas. That's paying for three different energy infrastructures, each with its capital costs, losses, parasitic loads and standing costs.
Technically, all of this is feasible, I've seen all elements done. Whether it's ever going to be economically feasible I can't see.
About time
A physicist friend who is well into plasma got head hunted by that Aldermaston research shed, oh well over ten years ago now. He outlined the gas engine to me some time before that and I am wholly surprised NOT that we still do not have these things generating electricity in the home.
There are numerous myths still shrouding the subject. For a start, academics still assume that you have to compress the stuff before it's useful. The greedy always want to see this implemented "at scale", and including "mega power" suppliers and the inevitable power "grid".
Whist we are stuck with development being driven by greed and profit, we will never see the advantages or benefits at consumer level, unfortunately. However, I do believe my mate Neil about the efficacy of small, local, electricity production, and maybe that's why he's disappeared into a UK research facility many ears ago...........
ALF
Re: About time
Where does this gas come from to power the domestic gas engines?
And if they're to realise the benefits of "small, local, electricity production" they'll need something to share capacity between properties (assuming there's no madcap ideas to size domestic units to meet peak island demand with no grid connection)....oh, hold on, so they do need a grid. But it will be carrying local balancing loads until it can't, and the whole grid cost then gets spread over fewer units and....nahh, this idea of generating your own power, it's pants.
As for "academics still assume that you have to compress the stuff before it's useful", what a load of bollocks - gas is compressed for storage and transport, because the asset cost is otherwise unfeasible.
"Whist we are stuck with development being driven by greed and profit, we will never see the advantages or benefits at consumer level,"
What utter, utter garbage.
Re: About time
Scale almost always beats smaller. At the most basic for heat engines, surface to volume ratio decreases with bigger so less heat loss. Also friction losses are relatively less for bigger moving engines - another surface to volume effect. Ancillary equipment often doesn't scale similarly so the same clever controller works just as well for a big system as for a household or community setup.
It's an interesting concept
And it may have uses in some cases/some places but it's no magic bullet (because if there was a magic bullet somebody would be making billions of it right now).
I'm all for local/less centralised power generation closer to the point of demand because it ticks a lot of boxes in terms of resilience/not having to build and maintain massive amounts of grid capability/not ramming up wind turbines in rural parts hundreds of miles from where the demand is (because subsidies and free money).
But hydrogen and ammonia - tricky customers at the best of times and as already mentioned by another commenter, they need a significant amount of supporting infrastructure (per site) to be safely handled. As for electrolysis - at a time when large parts of the world are generally dealing with too much (floods), not enough (drought) or bouncing back and forth between the two somebody rocking up and saying they want to steal some of it to generate electricity is going to make for a fun conversation (plus where are they putting the damn wind turbines to feed the electrolysis process in the first place?).
recursion
MTBP? M ean T ime B etween medium-term business P lans.