GTUsers.com, a web portal designed and maintained by Gasre Oy (www.gasre.com) to facilitate communication among owner/operators of gas turbines, transitioned from a “hobby” to a professional service in 2014. Coincidentally, the independent Finnish firm, launched in that year the development of its TMMonitor™ product for gas-turbine maintenance management and parts tracking. This software is represented in the US by Lodestar™ and TTS Energy Services.

The activities of GTUsers.com are coordinated by Yrjo Komokallio, a turbine specialist, who is CEO of Gasre. The web portal is segmented by engine type (currently 11 machines are represented), and access to the discussions, databases, etc, associated with each is restricted to the members of that group. You can be a member of a group only if you own and operate such a unit. The individual groups are controlled by their own end-user steering committees. In sum, more than 5000 users, representing over 1500 gas turbines, participate in GTUsers.com.

Pertinent to this report, GTUsers.com has hosted web meetings for owner/operators of V94.3A (SGT5-4000F, AE94.3A) engines since 2009 and for V94.2 (SGT5-2000E, AE94.2) machines since 2012. Annual conferences were added in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Last year (2019), the 94.3A group met in Istanbul in October, the 94.2 users in Berlin in November.

Sponsors of GTUsers.com activities familiar to US readers include ARNOLD Group, Sulzer, APG, MD&A, Freudenberg, Liburdi, Dekomte, Trinity Turbine Technology, and Gas Turbine Controls.