GE’s South Korean upgrade to improve 7F gas turbine performance by nearly 5 percent

GE recently won a contract with

"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:#333333">Korea Southern Power Company, Ltd. (KOSPO), the largest electric utility in South Korea. T

he contract covers the upgrading of two 7F gas turbines with its FlexEfficiency Advantage Advanced Gas Path (AGP) solution, and marks the 100th system sold to date. The two units will be installed at the Pusan plant in Incheon.

GE customers are operating 22 7F gas turbines with AGP technology. The company announced the project at the recent PowerGen International 2012 trade conference in Orlando, Fla. AGP upgrade technology broadens the operating range of installed gas turbine assets with performance improvements including up to a 4.8 percent output increase and fuel efficiency improvement as much as 1 percent in combined cycle operation.

mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">This solution also enables GE customers to benefit from the industry's longest maintenance intervals of up to 32,000 hours or 900 starts, which can extend outage intervals by up to 33 percent. AGP design innovations also can help lower lifecycle maintenance costs by extending gas turbine asset and parts life out to as much as 96,000 hours.

KOSPO has installed six AGP systems at its Shinincheon plant to generate 130 MW of additional power. In addition, Calpine Corp's Los Medanos and Pastoria plants in California, and Westbrook facility in Maine, have installed AGP technology on six GE 7F gas turbines. Also, AGP upgrades on two 7F gas turbines at Duke Energy's Smith Energy Complex in Raleigh, N.C., are currently being installed.