Power plants were designed for a 30-year life. But depending on how you ran (starts vs hours) you may need to replace the rotor before your get to 30 years. Or your plant life may be extended beyond the 30.
So if you need a rotor, which is a major capital investment, you’re going to want to look at the new date you’re trying to reach. Ideally, you’d want to match the rotor life to expire right after that date. What’s important is the projected mission of the plant from now until then. Think about the number of starts, the number of hours, capacity factor, etc. Then, it’s an iterative conversation between engineering, operational risk, and finance.
The good news is that we recognize the dilemma and we’re here to help. But as you might expect, every plant is likely to have a different outcome, simply because every plant has different goals in your corporate strategy.
Since the F rotor was initially launched in the mid-90s, there have been many world and industry changes that have caused us to rethink how to operate a gas-powered plant. For example, legislation and influx of renewable power has caused gas power to become a back-up plan or be used to stabilize the grid in some regions.
In other regions, the retirement of coal and nuclear power has increased the burden on gas-powered plants to increase their output and provide more power to the grid. These two shifts in the energy landscape are just a few examples of what has caused GE to rethink how to best service and support power plant operators.
To support operators who need their plant to start more and cycle frequently, we’ve had to work closely with them to really think through this issue, and come up with creative solutions on how to best modify the equipment. We know that operators subsidizing a decline in coal or nuclear generated power have had to push their gas powered plants to the limits of physics by increasing the temperature and using hardware that can provide superior performance.
