Repowering is occurring in both thermal and renewable power plants, as new technologies make older facilities new again. The practice involves replacing aging generating units at thermal plants with new, higher-capacity turbines, or retrofitting a renewable energy site with more efficient components—in both cases, significantly increasing a power plant’s output while extending the facility’s life.
At a thermal plant, it could be completing a fuel switch from coal to natural gas, or even—as some experts told POWER—replacing coal generation with output from small modular nuclear reactors. A wind farm operator could erect taller, more efficient wind turbines to increase productivity. The owner of a solar farm may install new, more advanced solar panels to increase the performance of the array.
