Fourteen years ago, the MHI T-Point demonstration combined-cycle plant in Takasago, Japan, changed the way modern gas turbines are validated under real operating conditions. In February, T-Point marked yet another milestone by starting to validate the world’s largest and highest efficiency gas turbine, which operates at the unprecedented turbine inlet temperature of 1,600C.
Until the 1990s, gas turbine prototypes were shop-tested and validated at “beta” sites where commercial power production was typically hampered by issues associated with the introduction of new technologies. In order to optimize the process of detecting and correcting defects during the validation phase, and to prevent exposing clients to the debugging process, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) introduced the concept of in-house validation under real operating conditions.
The plants providing this service are operated and maintained by MHI staff and sell their electrical output to local utility companies. Carlos Koeneke, vice president, project engineering at Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas Inc., told POWER in April that MHI built the first 50-Hz validation plant, K-Point, in Kanazawa in 1992. It was followed in 1997 by a 60-Hz counterpart in Takasago, called T-Point (Figure 1).
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| 1. Carrying its own financial weight. The T-Point combined-cycle plant is maintained and operated by MHI under dispatch instructions from the local utility, Kansai Electric. The plant is frequently started and stopped, and every single MW of generated electricity is sold under a contract. This makes it economically possible to sustain long-term validation operation. Courtesy: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) |
“These demonstration plants were the first of their kind and revolutionized the way validation of advanced gas turbines is performed,” Koeneke said. “K-Point plant was decommissioned several years ago, but T-Point plant continues selling the generated power and even today, 14 years after T-Point went commercial, there is no other company that performs the comprehensive validation that the T-Point plant provides.”
The highest cost of sustained long-term validation under real operating conditions is not the equipment but the fuel consumed. The T-Point plant is maintained and operated by MHI under dispatch instructions from the local utility (Kansai Electric). The plant is frequently started and stopped, and every single MW is sold under a contract, as with any other independent power producer. Koeneke explained that this arrangement “makes it possible, from the economic point of view, to sustain long-term validation operation.”
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