Contributor Haijun Ding is GE Energy’s China Country Sales Leader for Thermal Power
On Saturday I was among a small group of GE colleagues, our Chinese partners and some 30 university students to welcome Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, to the Beijing Taiyanggong Thermal Power Plant.
I was particularly excited about this event because not only has GE provided two 9FA gas turbines and has long-term service contracts with the plant, but because I have been personally involved as the GE Energy Account Manager for this project since 2005. I also found that Hillary Clinton was impressed by what she saw in the plant.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity to see in action here the important issues on which the two countries must work together – clean energy and climate change”, she said. She stressed that the power plant “represents such a wonderful collaboration,” that the two countries should “do more and more of this” in the future.
I have been always proud of what GE and my team have been doing here, but it’s great to see what I have worked on is becoming a showcase of the U.S.-China partnership on cleaner energy and fighting against climate change.
Taiyanggong Thermal Power Plant is China’s first tri-generation facility in the city center, providing electricity, steam to district heating in winter and cooling of air-conditioning in the summer. Compared with China’s traditional coal-based power generation, it reduces nitrogen oxide tremendously and carbon emission by half.
In North China, coal-fired heating has been one of the main sources of air pollution. At Taiyanggong power plant, heat is captured from the power generation process and is sent to hundreds of thousands of homes in a 40 kilometer area.
GE provided key components of the gas turbines manufactured in Greenville, South Carolina and full assembly of the generator made in Schenectady, New York. The gas turbine assembly was completed at the Qinhuangdao workshop of our Chinese partner, Harbin Power Equipment Company, which also supplied a steam turbine to the project.
