Arizona G&T

Nathen Hatch

Shaping Engineering Leadership through Experience

My experience comes from 16 years in the utility industry and an additional 5 years in power generation. I have learned that the greatest strength of an organization is the people and the work to support it (both directly and indirectly).  Treating these people as such leads to developing relationships of trust with the employees and a culture of individuals wanting to aid each other as they seek the best for the organization.  A lot of times, management forgets that its biggest and most important resource is its employees.

Managing the Challenges of Complex Generation Projects

Managing complex generation engineering projects brings many challenges, ranging from technical logistical to budget and schedule, and on to informational and personal.  Any project is plagued with these challenges, and mitigating them requires evolving strategies while working with the constraints and a good team of individuals.

Improving Reliability through Data and Analysis

Reliability and efficiency are improved across power generation systems by understanding what is causing them to be inefficient in the first place.  The wise use of generation data can tell the story about what is plaguing the system as a whole. 

“When building a new generation technology, it is imperative to understand how it acts and what its limitations are.”  

If the individual issues are addressed, the entire system improves.  Data analytics can be an important factor in understanding how your system is performing, and where it lacks.  Addressing the specific issues will result in the entire system improving.

Integrating New Technologies into the Generation Fleet

The generation landscape is changing.  When building a new generation technology, it is imperative to understand how it acts and what its limitations are.  It is much easier to commission a generation asset than to integrate it into your fleet. The challenge is to operate it efficiently from the asset’s perspective while simultaneously meeting the loads required through dispatch. New technologies don’t behave like older technologies and have limited dispatchable ranges.

Navigating Rising Energy Demand and Generation Constraints

At present, the greatest impact on generation is the energy demand driven by changing technological landscapes.  Current data centers and artificial intelligence that uses these data centers are poised to almost double the amount of energy demanded in certain areas.  The ability to supply the needs of these demands is driving up the cost of power for everyone, as the OEMs cannot supply the needed equipment to generate on a scale not seen before. This is increasing lead times on equipment for everyone else and pushing out the availability of any generation equipment for every other customer. 

In the short term, power is not available, and unless you are in line currently, it will not be available to you, regardless of how much you are willing to pay for it.  This is driving up the costs of energy for everyone as people are positioning themselves in a favorable position to meet their customer needs.