GE completes major inspection of Siemens turbine

GE has completed the major inspection of the Siemens’s 60-megawatt (MW) SGT-800 gas turbine installed at the Ufa TPP-2 combined-cycle power plant—owned by Bashkir Generation Company LLC’s (BGC LLC)—was completed on time and successfully. The 519-MW plant in the Republic of Bashkortostan provides heat to more than half of the residents and industrial facilities in Ufa, the capital city of the Republic, with a population exceeding 1 million people. The project was completed in December 2019 and reduced operational costs, increased the availability of the plant by extending the maintenance intervals of the power generation equipment and helped BGC LLC better cope with Russia’s winter season, which typically lasts from October until May.

Through GE Gas Power’s Cross-Fleet Solutions, which inject GE technology into other equipment manufacturers’ (OEM) units and adopts them into the GE services installed base—the overhaul interval of the SGT-800 gas turbine in Ufa was extended of 25 %,, which is equivalent to approximately seven months of operations. Additionally, after the next outage, the maintenance interval is planned to increase even further. The repair of several key components of the power unit, including components of the combustion chamber, was carried out by the GE Energy Technology Center in Kaluga (150 kilometers south of Moscow).

The major inspection included the modernization of the main elements of the turbine unit, as well as first startup, operational commissioning and tuning, test validations and safety measures.

GE has been providing repair and modernization services for other OEM gas turbines in Russia since 2018. GE’s Cross-Fleet Solutions offering provides an increase of maintenance intervals for Siemens’ SGT-800 units of up to 40,000 hours/900 starts, enhancements to plant output by up to 6% and efficiency by up to 1.5% (depending on the SGT-800 turbine rating). Most of the SGT-800 maintenance is carried out in the GE Energy Technology Center in Kaluga, where GE also has a localized SGT-800 spare parts warehouse to ensure the availability of its key components and provides the possibility of replacing them promptly – up to within 24 hours.