For Dubai utility, Siemens develops gas turbine controller to prevent degradation

Siemens and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) have signed an agreement to collaborate on an advanced data-driven project. The project is designed to help DEWA achieve its vision of becoming a sustainable, innovative world-class utility, and to ensure the highest levels of performance, efficiency and reliability of its power generation assets.

Siemens and DEWA are working together to identify ways to improve thermal efficiency, provide cost-effective solutions for performance optimization, manage costs and reduce fuel consumption and emissions. At the core of the project are Siemens’ data-driven Digital Asset Optimization services, part of the company’s Digital Services for Energy portfolio, and the development of a new intelligent, self-learning controller for the SGT5-4000F gas turbine.

Siemens’ Digital Asset Optimization uses on-site digital monitoring of a unit’s performance and advanced data analytics to more closely target a specific issue, such as age-related degradation, and to provide recommendations for an operating mode to address this and other issues that may be leading to the unit’s under-performance.

Ten SGT5-4000F gas turbines at DEWA’s L2-station and M-station were monitored over the past several months. Based on the results, Siemens and DEWA are jointly developing optimized solutions including an intelligent, self-learning gas turbine controller for automated adjustment of firing temperature to address preventable degradation. The controller development process combines gas turbine thermodynamics with advanced methods of machine learning. The new controller will be tested at Siemens gas turbine plant in Berlin, Germany, before it enters commercial operation at a DEWA plant by the end of 2017.

The agreement brings the long-standing cooperation between Siemens and DEWA to a new level, paving the way for the two companies to jointly explore additional benefits of data-driven services.

The implementation with DEWA’s gas turbines commenced in September 2016, and is expected to be completed by September 2017. Today, 25 Siemens E- and F-class gas turbines generate approximately 5,300 MW and contribute approximately 52 percent of the total power generation capacity of DEWA.

Siemens has executed similar Digital Asset Optimization projects with new advanced intelligent controllers in the 60Hz market with select SGT6-6000G and SGT6-5000F gas turbines in the US.