According to the authors, a revolution is under way in electricity generating technology. It may soon radically transform the power industry in both industrial and developing countries. This revolution involves the upgrading of the familiar but little-used gas turbine. In the electric utility industry the gas turbine has until recently been restricted largely to little-used peaking plants; in cogeneration (simultaneous production of electricity and process heat in the same unit), the gas turbine has been used mainly in applications characterized by steady steam loads. This paper describes how innovations are making it possible for gas turbines to compete in cogeneration markets characterized by variable heat loads, and to compete in central-station applications with conventional baseload and load-following technologies, using low-quality as well as high-quality fuels.
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Williams et al. (1988) studied this question.