Alternative Gas Turbines Maintenance Concepts by Independent Service Providers

摘要

In the 1990’s up to the mid 2000’s gas-based combined-cycle power generation (CCGT) was seen as the preferred technology of choice across the globe based on (i) its low emissions compared with coal, its low cost of electricity, and (ii) the high thermal efficiencies that CCGT’s can deliver. This saw a heavy substantial financial investment in new CCGT power plants. From the mid 2000’s onwards however the power companies in North America have seen the economic viability of their CCGT’s eroded by (i) a rise in the market price of gas globally and (ii) the collapse of the power market following the oversupply of heavy duty gas turbines at the turn of the century. Such measures in US has left the North America CCGT operators in a rather difficult position struggling to survive. The operators were faced with the dilemma of either reducing their operational costs or leave stay out of business. As the operational costs were mainly the fuel and maintenance costs, the users had very little choice but to focus on reducing their O&M costs – as these were the only ones which could have been impacted. As this time many operators decided to go and take that risk and start working with the independent non-OEM service providers (ISPs) – a risk that for most of them has paid off. In those early days, the ISPs did not have such a reputation nor the track-record of servicing gas turbines and their early success was mainly based on the fact that most of them had significant OEM experience and that their price levels were significantly lower than those of the OEMs. While today the OEMs are still preferred solution for servicing their Gas Turbines, the ISPs have proliferated and established themselves as a viable alternative so that they can compete with OEMs not only based on the price differentiations but also very often on quality of services and repairs in particular. This Paper looks at some of the alternative Long-Term Maintenance options that have proven track-records in not only providing alternative solutions at lower costs but also bringing some advanced technologies which help extend the assets useful operational life-time.