The overall development trend of gas powered generator units: benefiting from AI computing power construction and dual carbon goals, entering a new upward cycle, localization, going global, and zero carbon transformation are the core directions. Based on publicly available industry information, specific trends can be divided into the following aspects:
1. Demand side: AI data center explosion drives demand, upgrading from backup power to main power
The acceleration of global AIDC (Artificial Intelligence Data Center) construction, coupled with the aging of power grids and the retirement of coal-fired power in North America and other regions, continues to widen the power gap, directly driving a high demand fornatural gas generator
Originally, gas turbine units were mostly used as peak shaving and standby power supply. Now large Internet enterprises have begun to build their own distributed gas power stations as the main power supply of the data center, putting forward higher requirements for equipment reliability and full life cycle costs.
By 2025, the global installed capacity of gas turbines will rapidly approach the historical high point, with a supply-demand gap of 30-40 gigawatts, which is the most serious structural shortage since 2000. It is expected that the supply-demand imbalance will continue until 2030.
2. Technical side: Zero carbon transformation is the core direction, and hydrogen blending combustion has become the mainstream route
To adapt to the dual carbon target, the iteration of gas turbine technology focuses on carbon reduction:
Hydrogen blending combustion technology: Mainstream manufacturers have achieved a hydrogen blending ratio of 15% -20%, and companies such as GE plan to achieve 100% hydrogen burning by 2030; China has launched the world's first dual fuel gas turbine that is compatible with three fuels: hydrogen, ammonia, and natural gas.
Efficiency improvement: The efficiency of combined cycle gas turbines has exceeded 60%, and with the addition of cogeneration, the total energy utilization efficiency can reach up to 90%, continuously improving economic and environmental efficiency.
Differentiated development of small and medium power ranges: Reciprocating gas turbines have higher efficiency and lower initial investment than gas turbines in the power range of 0.5MW-20MW, becoming the mainstream choice for distributed energy and backup/main power sources in data centers.