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With U.S. combined-cycle plants increasingly being cycled—rather than being run continuously, as they were designed to do—owner/operators worry that units expected to last two or three decades may survive only a few years without an expensive overhaul. Cycling takes as much of a toll on heat-recovery steam generators as it does on gas turbines. Whether you’re procuring a new HRSG or adapting an existing one for cycling service, robust design features should be what you’re looking for.

The U.S. power generation industry is changing at warp speed, via regulatory changes, consolidation, mergers, and sales of assets at yard-sale prices. New players have entered the market and become major players overnight, while several mainstays have gone bankrupt. Though many of the latter blamed high gas prices for their woes, well-diversified merchants enjoyed a record year. Whatever changes are in store for the business of combined-cycle generation, you can be sure that innovations in plant design and O&M such as those described in this special section will keep pace with them.

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Increased cycling of combined-cycle plants has made precise control of attemperator spray water within heat-recovery steam generators more important if damage to their hardware and piping is to be avoided. Complicating the issue is the industry’s still-limited experience with cycling and the fact that demands on the attemperator and turbine bypass of cycled plants are more stringent than those on baseloaded units.

I couldn’t help but marvel at the synchronicity of two unrelated events over the past few weeks. The first, on January 12, was the rare cancellation of a major military acquisition program with problems called “too expensive to fix.” It takes an Act of Congress to kill most military contracts due to the pork flowing […]

Nearly five years ago, a major IPP began standardizing steam cycle chemistry feed, control, and monitoring across its combined-cycle fleet. This article discusses the steps taken, the costs incurred, and the technical and financial benefits achieved. Although the project focused on non-cogeneration plants, the findings detailed below are broadly applicable to other kinds of plants. However, the specific implementations (especially of the chemistry standards) described may have to be modified slightly for application to cogen plants.

I couldn’t help but marvel at the synchronicity of two unrelated events over the past few weeks. The first, on January 12, was the rare cancellation of a major military acquisition program with problems called “too expensive to fix.” It takes an Act of Congress to kill most military contracts due to the pork flowing […]

Southern California Edison (SCE, Rosemead, Calif.) closed the 1,580-MW coal-fired Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev., on December 31. In a filing with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), SCE said it expects the plant to remain off-line for four years—the time it will take for the utility and the plant’s other owners to battle […]

Fluor Corp. (Aliso Viejo, Calif.) has finished building and commissioning the 620-MW Jack County power plant (Figure 2) near Jacksboro, Texas, for Waco-based Brazos Electric Cooperative Inc. The natural gas–fired, combined-cycle plant officially came on-line on February 1. 2. Texas 2 x 1 step. The gas-fired, 620-MW, combined-cycle Jack County Generation Plant was built and […]

The Russian Federation plans to start building a floating nuclear power plant this year. According to the country’s atomic energy agency (Rosatom), the first plant will be small (3 MW) but could lead to the development of offshore plants with capacities of several hundred megawatts. The pioneering plant will be sited off the coast of […]