South Korea Newest Customer for Siemens H-Class Gas Turbine

South Korean utility GS Electric Power and Services Co. is Siemens Energy’s newest customer for the German firm’s new high-efficiency H-Class gas turbine. Siemens said today that it would supply—for the first time—a complete combined cycle power plant equipped with the new-generation gas turbine.

Siemens commercially launched the H-class turbine in June last year after a nearly decade-long development phase that took it from prototype to marketing. The company said it had achieved “a masterpiece of engineering” that sets a world-record efficiency of 60%. Among the turbine’s many technological achievements, temperatures inside it reportedly reach up to 1,500C, and it can go from standby to start-up in 5 minutes and reach full power operation in just 15 minutes.

Florida Power & Light last year signed up for six 60-hertz, 274-MW H-class turbine generator packages for the modernization of its Riviera Beach and Cape Canaveral Next Generation Clean Energy Centers in Florida. Seoul-based GS Electric Power will use the turbine in its planned 400-MW Bugok 3 natural gas plant, which is scheduled to come online in the summer of 2013 (Bugok 2 was a POWER Top Plant in 2008).

Siemens will supply the Bugok 3 power plant as a turnkey project. The scope of supply includes a new-generation SGT6-8000H gas turbine, SST6-5000HI-L steam turbine, a hydrogen-cooled generator SGEN6-2000H, a BENSON HRSG as well as electrical equipment and the SPPA-T3000 instrumentation and controls system.

Siemens said that it was seeing “great interest” in the turbine from Russia and Brazil as well as from Germany, France, and Turkey.

Sources: Siemens Energy, POWER