Despite its contributions to global warming, coal thermal power is on an upswing due to the war in Ukraine and other factors.
The Tokyo company, jointly owned by Idemitsu Kosan and Nippon Yusen, better known as NYK Line, intends to develop sales channels by highlighting the system’s potential to help plants belch less carbon dioxide.
The company’s Ulty-V Plus, a boiler operation control system, was introduced in 2017, mostly at overseas power companies. Its artificial intelligence automatically controls boilers by reading steam pressure and other data, then calculating the optimum amount of coal to burn.
The result is efficient combustion that can reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by 0.5% to 1.5%.
NYK Idemitsu charges ¥55 million (US$403,000) for a large power plant system that “can reduce fuel costs by ¥100 million annually,” according to Yuji Okamura, an NYK Idemitsu director and chief of the sales engineering department.
NYK Idemitsu, which has sold about 130 Ulty-V Plus units, intends to bring that up to 1,000 during the next decade. As the system has been introduced to about 80% of Japan’s coal thermal power plants, the company will now target the rest of Asia, especially Asean countries, where coal remains the main power plant fuel.
Although NYK Idemitsu has been making overseas sales – including to plant operators in Taiwan – these sales make up less than 10% of the company’s total.
In addition to highlighting the system’s ability to save on fuel costs, NYK Idemitsu plans to pitch Ulty-V Plus as capable of reducing CO2 emissions. The company also plans to offer a subscription option to attract customers who might otherwise be put off by high upfront costs.
Coal thermal power plants discharge large amounts of CO2. As such, they are losing favour with parts of the global public championing decarbonisation.
Despite their contributions to global warming, however, coal power plants have been resurgent. According to a Nikkei tally using statistics from UK research company Ember, the total power generated by coal thermal plants around the world in 2021 increased 9% from a year earlier, to 10.04 trillion kilowatt-hours.
That’s a record, exceeding the 9.83 trillion kwh from 2018, the previous high mark since comparable statistics began being kept in 2000.
With energy prices remaining at year-to-date highs, demand for coal, which is cheaper than natural gas, has demonstrated resiliency. The importance of coal is increasing even further in Asia as European countries, which are working to wean themselves off their reliance on Russian fossil fuel, hoard liquefied natural gas.
Idemitsu Kosan, the top shareholder of NYK Idemitsu, is working on ways to decarbonise coal thermal power. For example, it sells black pellets, a high-calorie fuel produced by torrefaction of wood pellets obtained from sustainable sources, such as wood offcuts.
As NYK Idemitsu’s boiler control system can also work with biomass fuels, including black pellets, the system has the potential to be used to promote overseas black pellet sales.