A decade ago, disruptive change came to power grids. Aging coal plants in Europe and the U.S., some in operation since World War II, began to retire. Saddled with high maintenance costs, coal plants were shuttered throughout the developed world. In their place rose new fleets of wind turbines, dotting the American plains from Texas to Iowa. In Europe, wind power blossomed onshore but also extended its reach offshore, thriving in the Continent’s notoriously stormy seas. But as coal plant retirements accelerated, the power sector needed a replacement for this lost capacity, a solution that would be “firm” enough to stand in for coal, but versatile enough to work in close partnership with wind power, as well as solar, with their fluctuating electrical output.
It was at this juncture, right around 2010–2012, “that the company started to see the need for a more efficient gas turbine,” says Ty Remington, gas power sales executive at GE Vernova. “And so we launched the HA gas turbine product line and began our journey.” According to Remington, the first HA units were delivered to France, Japan, and the U.S., and that kicked off a decade-long rollout as the HA series helped grids navigate the new landscape. Today the HA product portfolio, comprising the 7HA and 9HA product lines, has accumulated an astonishing 3 million hours of operation, from just 116 units spread across the globe. For perspective, that’s equal to one of these turbines running for 342 years.
How did this one turbine model come so far?
“By listening to the marketplace,” says Remington. First introduced in 2011, the HA line is engineered to produce energy more efficiently and help support today’s flexible power generation needs. Without question, the HA is a nimble workhorse, but down at the detailed level, the HA product portfolio has proven to be customizable to run on alternative fuels like hydrogen, can be retrofitted with an exhaust system for carbon capture, is modular for easy installation and maintenance, and, most important of all, can quickly increase or decrease its output — a critical 30-minute, on/off capability that can really strut its stuff in grids where wind and solar electricity rises and falls. To understand more fully the role natural gas turbines are playing in the energy transition, however, it’s not enough to know that wind comes and goes, the sun shines only during the day, and natural gas turbines fill the gaps in between.
Consider the dramatic changes to power grids in both Europe and the U.S. during the decade since the HA began its ascent. According to EIA data, in 2014 in the U.S., coal provided 1,580 terawatt-hours (TWh) of power, and wind and solar combined to provide 210 TWh. By 2024 coal had fallen to just 650 TWh and combined wind and solar had soared to 740 TWh. The story was similar in Europe: According to EI Statistical Review, coal power fell from 1,017 TWh to 530 TWh between 2014 and 2023, and combined wind and solar soared from 363 to 909 TWh. Natural gas, with its far lower carbon emissions than coal, helped solve the remainder of the equation.
For Remington, this confluence of the decline of coal and the rise of renewables was the crucible in which the HA was forged.
Technology Built for These Times
And the HA journey continues. Today, the rise of AI computational demand, along with the supertrend of electrification, has forced the IEA to raise its growth forecasts for global power again and again. In its latest report, released in February, the IEA saw 4.3% global growth last year, and projected 4.0% growth for this year and next year too — one of the strongest sustained growth advances in many years. As GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik recently wrote in an op-ed, “The International Energy Agency recently said the world will need to build as much capacity in the next five years as the U.S. and Europe did in the last 136 years.” While strong growth presents a challenge, it’s also an opportunity, according to Strazik, who said at last year’s Climate Week and UN General Assembly conference that “growth is the only thing that’s going to give us a chance to address” the climate challenge.
And growth is exactly how the HA, according to Remington, will march forward in its journey from 3 million to 10 million hours of runtime. The HA order book is quickly expanding, and GE Vernova is investing heavily in HA output capacity at its Greenville, South Carolina, facility. According to Remington, in the recent past it was generally an 18-to-24-month cycle from the signing of the contract to the delivery of new power equipment. But with so much demand, that delivery timeline has started to expand, and he says the goal of the company’s investment is to help ensure that customers are able to receive the products. “The power industry has accelerated incredibly fast, just in the past year and a half,” he says. Not coincidentally, the first AI chatbots started to appear just two years ago and were a hit with consumers.
Remington says it’s not just raw demand for more global power that will drive the HA forward, but the portfolio’s range of capabilities, which are now coming into view. For example, at the new Net-Zero Teesside Power station in the U.K., GE Vernova will supply a 9HA.02 turbine to be customized to intersect with a leading-edge carbon capture system, a testament to the HA’s flexibility. In a world of robust data center growth, where operators may have trouble finding a connection to the grid, they can choose instead to site the HA directly on their property, in what’s known as a behind-the-meter configuration. Can’t plug in to the grid? Build your own.
Looking ahead, Remington discerns that most of the dynamics that got the HA to its current milestone are still seen today. Electrification of residential and industrial segments, fast-growing wind and solar that require firming, and still more coal plant closures are all set to accelerate in the years ahead, and on top of that there is now an enormous AI load fueling demand. “Even if you took just a fraction of the load growth currently forecasted,” he says, “the numbers are still astounding.”