CCUG

It’s important to have a comprehensive checklist of what to inspect on your HRSG, and how, before conducting a condition assessment of your equipment for plant management and/or due diligence purposes. Your checklist may have scores of items to review but it’s impossible to identify everything to look at—usually because your depth of knowledge and […]

Stellite liberation from large valves installed in main and hot reheat (HRH) steam systems serving F-class combined cycles, considered a major industry problem 10 years ago, has been eliminated by substituting chrome carbide as the hard-facing material for critical valve parts. The editors first learned of stellite delamination at the 2009 7F Users Group Conference

Independent users groups serving owner/operators at cogeneration and simple- and combined-cycle plants powered by gas turbines are an invaluable resource for station personnel. Almost all have online forums available 24/7/365 to help answer technical questions quickly and get you moving in the right direction with possible solutions. Most colleagues offering their unbiased assistance have deep

Consulting Editor Steve Stultz’s reports on the last HRSG Forum with Bob Anderson and Australasian HRSG Users Group annual meeting discussed ageing issues associated with steam systems installed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As these systems in combined-cycle and cogeneration plants reach half-way in their design life, overheating of all components has become

Turning a profit in the business of electric generation can be challenging given the competitive nature of the industry today. Be prepared to take advantage of revenue opportunities, which can surface quickly, by upgrading equipment capable of improving your balance sheet tomorrow. A case in point concerns fogging systems. Those responsible for gas turbines know

Large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) continue to demonstrate their ability to meet specific functional requirements of grid operations and management under a variety of business models and ambient conditions. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (Ladwp) is the latest to add a BESS, primarily for transmission-line stability. It follows several recent projects with

Some veteran gas-turbine (GT) asset managers have already been given responsibility for grid-scale storage facilities. Others may find their asset portfolio shift in this direction soon. If you are in this camp, or if you just want some technical guidance around this new asset class, get a copy of the Advancing Contracting in Energy Storage

The 2019 conference of the Combined Cycle Users Group (CCUG) was a prime example of “working together,” co-located with the generator (GUG), steam turbine (STUG), and powerplant controls (PPCUG) user organizations. Attendees were invited to participate in sessions conducted by all four groups at the Marriott St. Louis Grand, St. Louis, Mo, August 26-29. On

In what GE claims to be the largest gas turbine black-started by a modern battery, Entergy Louisiana has added a 7.4 MWh lithium-ion (nickel-magnesium-cobalt chemistry) unit at its Perryville power station to restart a 2001-vintage, 150-MW 7F.03 peaking gas turbine/generator should grid power be lost. To re-energize the grid, black starts typically require separate gas

The turnkey digital front end (DFE) solution for aging, unreliable, or obsolete gas turbine load-commutated inverter (LCI) starting systems, described last year in CCJ ONsite, now has a user testimonial and operating experience supporting it. John Chaya, operations manager at Cogentrix’ Rock Springs (Maryland), reports that the installation by Turbine Controls & Excitation Group Inc