Wayne Adams with J W Adams and Associates

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

megawatts, alberta, talk, hydrogen, power, renewables, gas turbines, small modular reactor, plants, calgary, years, industrial, reactor, working, wayne, shut, combined cycle gas, gigawatt, sales consultant, building

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Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional, dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends.

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The men and women spelled

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so put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go. Alright,

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once again, thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk. And thank you for your continued support of a platform that is celebrating industrial professionals all around the world. Because you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly you innovate and you collaborate to solve problems. That's why we celebrate you on this podcast. We're also broadcasting on site power gin, here in the lovely town of New Orleans. And it is a buzz and we're right on the floor. We're having a great conversations, and you're going to be joining us and we're going to have another great conversation with a gentleman by the name of Wayne Adams. He's an international sales consultant. And we're gonna be talking about renewables. Let's get to it. Correct. All right. There it is. I'm worn out. Hi,

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Scott. Yeah, good to meet you. My friend. Pleasure. And my stars have aligned. Yes.

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Time Thi cat, but you're here in Calgary. So. Yeah,

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I live up in Calgary. Yeah, originally born in High River, Alberta. I'm 73 years in as we speak. Yeah. So I've been doing this a long time just getting warmed up. Yeah. See, what

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are you going to do? Well, I'm

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not going to retire. No. Yeah. I'm going down with my boots on.

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I was I was telling my family that I just said there's no way What am I? What am I going to do? Yeah, no, golf, golf.

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We got to wake up every morning and solve problems. Yes. problems every day.

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Look at you, man. I'm all in. I'm all giddy with excitement here. Yep. It's just sort of happened out of the blue. You're just wandering by their announcement book them. Let's sit down and have a chit chat. All right. Let's talk about the conference real quick. You having a good one?

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Yeah, we just got here. My friend Dick and I just a few minutes ago, and we've been just shaking hands and talking to all kinds of people about different widgets. And everybody's pumped.

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There's there's widgets around here. There's tons of widgets. So with that, we already know your background because you're always from Calgary. So that's, and you've been in the the power

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generation world all my life since 1973. Yeah, I met your 50. Here. You go. Yeah, this is my anniversary.

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You've seen a lot of changes. Yes, I

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have. Okay,

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for that. What do you think? I guess we're going to be talking about renewables. Renewables have been around for I want to say a number of years because I negotiated those contracts

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when we started with wind and then we've gone more into solar recently. And now we're talking about electrolysis, removable removal of hydrogen from from water with electrolysis units, but unfortunately, they've got to be one gigawatt, which is 1000 megawatts. So they're big in modules, like, say 20 megawatt modules. 50 of them,

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but what are you producing? Hydrogen? Yeah, I know. But how much you how do you? How do you back in if it's a gigawatt of power? Yep. And I've got I tried to get hydrogen, what's the eyeball? You actually have

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the volume numbers for you? They're big plants. Huge. And there's problems with hydrogen. We're trying to solve that right now. Because you can't pipe hydrogen very well. But you can burn hydrogen in gas turbines, but today, only about 25 to 30%. And various gas turbines, GE Mitsubishi, Siemens,

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got here we go, man. Yeah, I've got so many questions. So. So there's no color mixing. You're you're you're just you're but then you got a different heat rate to it. So you're, you're mixing you're mixing natural gas with hydrogen to try to come up with that recipe to be able to reduce

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emissions. That's exactly correct. co2, right. Yeah.

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What is that? What's What's that optimal?

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Well, the gas turbine. Power plants right now are sort of 800 megawatts. Yeah. Cookie Cutter plants, say with two by 240 megawatt gas turbines and a 320 megawatt steam turbine. And the small ones are about 105 megawatts or two by 40 megawatt lm 6000s. Everybody knows what that was, plus a 25 megawatt steam turbine, which are now Siemens units. They used to be dressed around but we got to think purchased a few years back. So

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but then again, it gets down if you're if you're trying to pull in more methane or not methane. Yeah, I didn't say that

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hydrogen, it's all part of it. Yeah,

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I got you I got a methane a component and then the capture of it. But if those, those the generation assets have to also take into consideration that, that that heat rate that is from the fuel, they have to redesign them to as well. Correct.

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And I don't have the exact heat rate. So whether you're running a gas turbine, recept compressors, but everybody's looking at going to hydrogen, because if you could go to 100%, hydrogen fuel in the gas turbines and compressors, or Recep engines to generate power, that would be wonderful. But that's like saying, we're going to go to net zero. Unfortunately, news alert, we're not going to net zero, we're not going to get there. And I am a huge proponent of renewables, not in our lifetime. All coal plants are not going to stop, they will still be running, we're trying to do the best we can. So let's just agree that maybe we'll get 60 to 80% of the way there, that would be very successful. See,

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again, it's a from my perspective, it's quite pragmatic. If I have a coal fired generator, that's baseload. That's yeah, that's like predictable, stable. Nothing's going to fluctuate, no, my cycles, it's a clean when I say clean, the power is good. It's not all over the place

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steady, and it's cheap power. Yes. But unfortunately, if we don't do something with the co2 in the atmosphere, we're not going to have to worry about how cheap our power is. We won't be here. Yeah. So we've got to do something about it. Like Alberta, for example. We've converted all our coal plants to natural gas fuel. It's done. It's over. But we're still putting co2 into the air. And yes, we're still polluting. But we're trying to get rid of the coal plants as fast as we can. You just can't shut them off. Two weeks ago, it was 38. Below. A week and a half ago, it was 38. Below. In Alberta. At seven o'clock at night, we had an emergency alert. If you don't start turning your lights off, we got lights all around us. Rolling blackouts, and we're not good. Within five to 10 minutes, I went and shut all my lights off unplugged my car's block heater and the power drop 200 megawatts in 10 minutes. Welcome to Alberta. It worked. And we did not have to go into rolling blackouts. So you shut all that we were doing 12.35 gigawatts of power that night Max that we could possibly put out. So when you all start to earn 350 megawatts just for the little province of Alberta? Yeah.

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So so when you have to shut down and get the pod alert, shut your lights off,

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it's wrong. It might be half an hour or half an hour, then you're then you're at risk of maybe having a glitch in the system and have a having a province wide blackout. It makes the power operators very nervous. And at 38 below it made me very nervous. How long can I be in my house at 38 below with no power. And I don't know my thermostat doesn't work, nothing works. My furnace doesn't work. It's getting cold.

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So tell us now, what we've touched upon are the conversion of existing Civilis again, in the case of Alberta, the coal fire plants and natural gas,

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natural gas fire were bringing on combined cycle combined cycle gas turbine CCGT plants got cooking the whole whole whole CEC combined cycle gas turbine plant got it two by two by one, to gas turbines to heat recovery steam generators, taking the waste heat hot gases off the back of the gas turbine and generating steam. You have a steam turbine, that's the most efficient it is plant. And we're going to have lots of those plans. So the new pirate power island of the future that we're all trying to get to is probably going to have hydro power in the background. We've got hydro but Quebec or the king of hydro in Canada, it is Ontario. Yeah. So we got that we're going to have solar, we're going to have wind hopefully nearby so you don't have to transmit it too far. And we're going to have a CCGT plant, combined cycle gas turbine No plan, we're gonna have a small modular reactor nuclear sort of in the 300 to 400 megawatt size welcomes snap G and attach. Darlington Yeah. SaskPower is signed up for some. And so as Alberta capital power and Ontario Power just did a contract I believe, and they want to do for and Alberta. And I believe those are going to be 300 to 400 megawatts each. But this is

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going to nuclear, yes, really two weeks ago.

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But you know, how long is this going to take? Nobody's gonna get a license for a small modular reactor until they figure out how exactly they're going to handle the waste. And that's kind of where they're at right now. There's a lot of hype about small modular reactors and money's being spent, and I believe we have to spend it. But we have to get know what we're going to do with the waste from the reactor. Now, we might be bearing it in the Canadian.

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You have some land? Oh, well,

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Ontario bedrock, the Canadian Shield. And it may be 200 feet underground. And they may drive the reactor when it's old underground, and encapsulate it and leave it there forever. They're thinking about that. That's one of the options. Rather than taking the fuel out at 2530 years. Just take the whole reactor under there. It's small and encapsulated under there and leave it and bring online another one's it's got to be cookie cutter. Everything has to be cookie cutter. When we say we're not getting rid of 1000 We're getting rid of nuclear power. What they really mean to say we're getting rid of 1000 megawatt reactors. Think Poland, they got six of them there. You've heard about them in the news. 1000 megawatts each. Nobody has ever been able to put one of those things online on schedule and on budget. Not even close. Not even close. Yeah. So you cannot schedule that kind of infrastructure. You need small ones. And you need it's like building Boeing seven, four sevens. Yeah, think of it like that. We need plants building pretty much the same reactor, three 400 megawatts, it might be 200. There may be two or three different types of plants. There's not only one type of Boeing aircraft, there's also Airbus, and delta and smaller ones. So think same sort of manufacturing techniques with small modular, yeah, it's

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all doable.

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It's all doable.

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I'm a big I'm a big reactor fan. Yes, I want to we start talking about the impact of the environment. Of course, you got everybody goes to the well, what happens when and fill in the blank? What happens? What do we do when it's spent? What are we?

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They're working very hard on that. And there's people around the world working on this, and they've been working on it since time began. We know there's a waste with nuclear reactors. But I guess you've got to ask yourself, what is worse than the oceans rising? 10 feet catastrophic hurricanes and storms. Like what are we afraid of here? Let's just get moving with this and do it right. We have

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to see Calgary or I mean, Alberta is a very unique province. Yes, it is. Because you're your energy rich. You've got a tremendous industrial base there. And that's what makes Alberta a very unique province. Yeah. And

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we're doing just fine. Alberta is going to boom, again. Yeah. Because we still have cheap housing. We've got this, this backlog of engineering, the best engineering in Canada, US out of Calgary easily. And Edmond. Yeah. So and we're working on this. Everybody thinks we're standing, standing still, oh, we hate renewables. No, we don't. The oil companies, if you talk to anybody in there that's in the know, they're not afraid of. Maybe oil production is going to reduce somewhat. We need to get rid of our coal. Like, what are the options here? If we do nothing? Yeah, but it's that's more scary than anything. We're talking

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but you guys, you guys are in the catbird seat. Just let's be candid. And then which the Catbird Yeah, you guys are because you guys, you've got the you've got the base. You've got you've got the horsepower, the intellectual and, and horsepower that exists in that province. Absolutely. The

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that's what I but those are, those

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are viable seats. I still struggle not to not to poopoo some of the renewable renewable solutions out there, but I know that there's a demand and that demand requires some stability and s and to pursue that stable Will Power is vital. Correct? And and when you start talking about nuclear when you start talking about

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you hear is very stable. Oh, it is. It's I mean, we're not going away from nuclear people hear that, oh, we're shutting down all of our nuclear plants in Germany and France. Yeah, that's the 1000 megawatt plants, but we're going to build a whole bunch of smaller ones, three 400, maybe 200 megawatt that's coming. That's

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by the way, that's not real small when you get right down to a 200 megawatts.

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But you got to be able to build them on time on budget. Yeah. I don't know when you're going to have them. Just like an airplane. Yeah, a 747 or an Airbus? No, yeah. So actually, the people that are in the league right now are China and Russia. Sorry to say it. China has already brought on their first small modular reactor, it's running last year, and the second one is coming. What's the status? You know? I think it's about three to 400 megawatts similar to G attaching. I didn't mean to advertise for them. But everybody knows this. It's not secret. Yeah. So in Russia, they took their small modular reactors out of their submarines 30 years ago, and put them in their icebreakers their nuclear power, folks. They already have a small modular reactor running in Siberia. It's

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not as if we, we have logy, we have the knowledge, we have the ability. Look at all of the the military vessels, like you just brought up. Yeah,

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the Russian icebreakers are the world leaders, and that's why they're taking control of the North West Passage. There's open water over on the Russian side, folks, they have an LNG plant there that's ready to take on LNG.

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I mean, have you been to the LNG surround here? Down in Calcutta? I

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know all about them. Yeah, I know all about them. And they're they're exporting LNG as fast as they can to Germany and they've got four receiving terminals there. I go to Croatia regularily. And there's an LNG terminal there that came online two years ago.

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They're massive. Yeah. I just think it's a this is such a fascinating engineering solutions. How

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fast are you? They call it floating storage Guinea gasification unit. And this huge ship comes in and unloads it goes down the pipeline through Croatia, up in Italy, William. I mean, come on. It is. Let's get with the program. Yeah, it's it's something that so anyways, that's sort of my take on what's going on. And I could sit here and talk all day, but I don't have all the numbers, but I just as an international sales consultant. I feel my job is to go out and talk to people like you talk to the people in the US. Talk to the people in China. There's no Russians here. They haven't showed up. They're having a lot. They're missing a great show and say welcome you guys. We have to work together. I love it.

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You are absolutely wonderful. Okay, well, no not don't keep your keep your headphones. You everybody's such in a hurry. His name is Wayne. He's an international sales consultant. And he was chirping on a number of topics that are near and dear to my heart. Most definitely. All right, we're broadcasting on site here at power Jun 24. Here in New Orleans. It is a collection of problem solvers. That's what I see. As I look out at the vast participants in all the little tools and techniques. Norway, Norway right there. Norway is right next to me. There's a brochure. There it is right there. He's got a brochure he's pumping Norway now. LM 2500s

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Hello, 20 bucks solution for air intake.

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There it is. Right there. All right, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. We're gonna have all the contact information for Wayne out on Industrial Talk.com. So stay tuned, we will be right back.

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You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

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Yeah, went Adams. That was powertrain. There's a lot of challenges happening in power generation, the market itself. I'm glad people like Wayne are working on those challenges. I really enjoyed the conversation around hydrogen. And I always wonder, why couldn't we just do more hydrogen. And apparently there's some challenges associated with that. And as I continue to say, challenges, but those are wonderful opportunities for success. And, you know, people like Wayne and his, let's say J W. Adams and Associate Inc. Very cool. Very good stuff. All right. We're building a platform. We're building an ecosystem of individuals such as yourself, you have a podcast, you want greater exposure, put it on Industrial Talk. If you want to just get on Industrial Talk and tell your story to amplify your story. It's all there you go out to Industrial Talk.com Find out more it is easy you talk to me we have to be about educating collaborating and innovating all the time as you can tell a PowerGen Be bold be brave they're greatly hanging out with Wayne changed the world we're going to have another great conversation shortly so stay tuned