Top Innovators
Latonya Johnson is Plant Manager at Georgia Power. Drew Uptain served as an Engineering Team Leader and was Project Manager for both the gas turbine air-cooled conversion and the hydrogen demonstration at Georgia Power. Yvonne Avila is a Project Manager at Southern Company Services in Technical Shared Services.
Southern Company - Georgia Power won the Fortnightly Top Innovator 2025 award ''Bertha Lamme Top Innovator in Power Generation'' for its Plant McDonough-Atkinson 50% Hydrogen Blend Testing.
PUF's Kerry Worthington: Describe the innovation and its positive impact.
Latonya Johnson: Georgia Power, in collaboration with Mitsubishi Power and EPRI, conducted a groundbreaking hydrogen-natural gas co-firing demonstration at Plant McDonough-Atkinson. This project successfully validated the use of a fifty percent hydrogen blend on an advanced-class gas turbine at partial and full loads. It was the largest hydrogen blend test of its kind to date.
Being the first to blend hydrogen at this level on an advanced-class turbine is a major innovation. The most significant outcome is that we proved it can be done and we did so while maintaining rigorous safety standards and operational reliability.