GE introduced the first HA-class gas turbine 10 years ago, and since then our engineering teams have been making continuous performance enhancements. Now the fastest-growing fleet of heavy-duty gas turbines, our HA fleet of 44 commercial units has accumulated more than 650,000 operating hours. In total, more than 45 customers have ordered more than 100 of our HA gas turbines.
Across our HA fleet, each original turbine is put through a rigorous full-speed, full-load (FSFL) validation test at our Greenville, South Carolina facility. This $200 million investment allows us to push the units beyond real-world conditions—running the turbines at 110% of their rated speeds at load, and replicating the harshest conditions, from the Arabian Desert to the mountains of Colorado—all to ensure that our customers have security of supply for their end users.
Our HA gas turbines have earned two world records for efficiency—one for powering the world’s most efficient combined-cycle power plant for EDF in Bouchain, France (achieving 62.2% efficiency on a net combined-cycle basis on a 50 Hz grid), and a second world record for achieving 63.08% gross efficiency on a 60 Hz grid at the Nishi-Nagoya Power Station in Japan.