Way back in 2010, based on a request from my old professor at IIT, I agreed to join the Board of a startup which wanted to build a better steam turbine. I spoke to the passionate promoter. He was a good thirty years old and had just completed his PhD. I asked him for a timeline. Maybe 20 years, he said hesitatingly. The voice sounded sincere and honest. Next day, we met near the shrine of Mehr Baba – a long pending item in my todo list. The company does’nt have a penny of revenue. The promoter draws only a survival salary. The team is probably the best in the world in steam turbines. It has seen five rounds of funding. All from domestic funds.
And someone recently commented that India did not have a deeptech ecosystem !!!!!! And that Indian venture capitalists invest in food apps !!! I had asked the promoter not to waste his time on Startup India. That is for chartered accountants, not for engineers. Focus on the technology. You do not need a customer or social media visibility. You need a differentiated product with a moat around your castle. That does not happen in a hurry.
I took him for a meeting to NETRA, the R&D centre of NTPC in 2022 based on an introduction by Alok Kumar, the then Power Secretary and an IIT Alumnus. A few weeks ago, I got to visit EDF (erstwhile Alsthom). They are the world’s largest supplier of steam turbines for nuclear power plants. A few days ago, I visited Hazira. It houses the steam turbine joint venture of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. One of the world’s largest producers of steam turbines for thermal coal power plants. These are world leaders in steam turbines.
And I think they are probably thirty years behind. Not bad for fifteen years of hard work. I looked at every single parameter – capital cost, power efficiency, weight, mean time between failure, annual down time, water consumption, erection time, space taken for installation, flexibility in operations, ambient conditions for operation …… it is a very long list. Zero chance. These were all generation (N-3) products. What we had was generation N+1.
There are two broad types of steam turbines. Low temperature and high temperature. The latter work on superheated steam and are more efficient. The former are used for nuclear reactors where efficiency does not matter so much but mean time between failure does. No one makes a product which can fit both applications. And exceed the efficiency and MTBF of both. Nuclear turbines give you around 24% efficiency. Thermal coal ones give you 28%.
This one gives 48%.
This means that an existing power plant can give you double the power output by just changing the steam turbine. No increase in coal consumption or change in the nuclear reactor. India produces close to 500 GW of steam turbine electricity. Changing the turbine can double this.
Netra should set up a division to study what they can do with the thousands of tons of waste steam turbines that need to be recycled.