Three GE Vernova-powered projects win 2026 POWER Magazine Awards for energy efficiency and decarbonization advances
On October 5, 2026, POWER Magazine named three GE Vernova-powered projects among its top honorees for the year — a sweep spanning two continents and distinct frontiers in energy. Vietnam’s Nhon Trach 3&4 power plant, Duke Energy’s DeBary facility in Florida, and Dominion Energy’s Parr Station in South Carolina took home four top awards, recognized for advances in LNG-fired generation efficiency, hydrogen combustion, and power plant modernization, respectively.
Three GE Vernova projects recognized at the 2026 POWER Magazine Awards
POWER Magazine announced its 2026 awards on October 5, handing out honors across four categories — Plant of the Year, Top Gas Plant, Hydrogen Award, and Reinvention Award. All four of those honors went to projects built around GE Vernova technology. That’s not a minor footnote. It reflects how broadly the company’s equipment is being deployed across different energy challenges and geographies.
GE Vernova is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and employs roughly 85,000 people across approximately 100 countries. Its portfolio spans gas power, electrification, wind, and decarbonization technologies — a range that helps explain why its customers showed up across such varied award categories in the same year.
Dominion Energy’s modernization project earned the Reinvention Award for turning that legacy site into something built for today’s grid demands.
Vietnam’s Nhon Trach 3&4 earns Plant of the Year and Top Gas Plant honors
The biggest haul of the night went to a plant most American readers probably haven’t heard of. Vietnam’s Nhon Trach 3&4, owned and operated by PetroVietnam Power Corporation (PV Power), took home both the Plant of the Year Award and the Top Gas Plant Award.
The 1.6 GW facility is Vietnam’s first LNG-fired power plant, running on GE Vernova’s 9HA.02 combined-cycle gas turbines. Those turbines push combined-cycle efficiency above 63% — a meaningful benchmark for a region still building out its power infrastructure.
The plant isn’t just a technical achievement, though. It plays a direct role in Vietnam’s Adjusted Power Development Plan VIII, which aims to integrate more renewables into the national grid. Doing that reliably requires flexible, dispatchable generation that can ramp up when solar and wind fall short. Nhon Trach 3&4 is designed to fill exactly that gap.
Duke Energy’s DeBary facility wins Hydrogen Award for first U.S. end-to-end green hydrogen system
Florida’s DeBary facility earned the Hydrogen Award for something that hadn’t been done before in the United States. Duke Energy, working with GE Vernova, retrofitted the combustion systems on two GE Vernova 7E.03 gas turbines at the site — producing the first U.S. facility capable of generating, storing, and combusting 100% green hydrogen for commercial peaking power generation. An end-to-end system, not just a pilot.
That distinction matters. Hydrogen has attracted serious interest as a low-carbon fuel, but most demonstrations have stayed small and controlled. DeBary moves the conversation into actual grid operations, where the stakes and the complexity are both considerably higher.
POWER Magazine recognized the project for bridging that gap. The award citation describes DeBary as a model for utilities looking to decarbonize existing generation assets without sacrificing reliable, dispatchable output — positioning hydrogen not as a distant aspiration but as a practical tool available now, at least for facilities willing to invest in the necessary infrastructure.
Dominion Energy’s Parr Station modernization receives the Reinvention Award
Parr Station in South Carolina has more than 100 years of energy generation history behind it. Dominion Energy’s modernization project earned the Reinvention Award for turning that legacy site into something built for today’s grid demands.
The upgrade centered on deploying GE Vernova’s LM6000VELOX package solution, which delivers fast-start capability and black start support — meaning the plant can come online quickly and help restart the grid after an outage. Both functions are growing more valuable as intermittent renewables continue entering the mix.
POWER Magazine’s recognition of Parr Station reflects a broader trend: aging power infrastructure doesn’t have to be retired to stay relevant. With the right upgrades, sites carrying decades of operational history can be repositioned as flexible assets that complement newer generation technologies rather than being displaced by them.
What the 2026 POWER Magazine Awards tell us about GE Vernova’s reach
POWER Magazine’s annual awards program spotlights top performers across the electricity-generating industry. Winning one category in a given year is notable. Winning across all four — across three projects on two continents, addressing three distinct technology challenges — says something about the breadth of a company’s installed base and customer relationships.
GE Vernova’s Gas Power business holds the industry’s largest installed base of gas turbines globally. That scale means its technology shows up everywhere from brand-new LNG plants in Southeast Asia to century-old sites being modernized in the American South. High-efficiency generation in Vietnam, hydrogen-ready infrastructure in Florida, legacy modernization in South Carolina — each project is different, each using GE Vernova equipment to address a specific piece of the energy transition puzzle.
Together, the three honored projects show how the path toward a more flexible, lower-carbon grid gets built incrementally, through projects that combine proven hardware with new operating approaches.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
