More than thirty-five people had the opportunity to visit the Supercritical Transformational Electric Power Project Demonstration (STEP Demo) site on October 21 and see the revolutionary new power generation technology first hand!

Attendees from the Experience POWER conference and others toured the newly constructed 22,000 ft2 building to learn how everything is coming together and see the current status of installing equipment and piping at this state-of-the-art demonstration site on Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI’s) campus in San Antonio.

The STEP Demo project will integrate and prove compact, modular technologies can be applied to generate clean, low-cost power from a wide range of heat sources. The facility is significantly smaller than today’s power plants, yet can generate enough power to provide electricity for a small town of ~10,000 homes.

Pictured bottom left is the full-scale turbine rotor for the 10MW test facility. At only ~60 inches long and >10 inches in diameter, the equivalent steam turbine would be more than 10 times this size. This desk-sized sCO2 turbine has power density similar to that of high-performance rocket engines.