GE announced that it successfully completed an ALSPA steam turbine controls migration to its advanced Mark VIe controls system with rotor stress controller upgrade at Engie Group’s Baymina power plant in Turkey. The first-of-its-kind Migration Pack upgrade included replacement of the controls technology while keeping the system’s core hardware infrastructure intact. The modernization is expected to increase flexibility, reliability and availability of the steam turbine and help Engie make smarter operational decisions based on controls data analytics.
Engie’s 770 MW, gas-fired Baymina plant is located in Ankara and generates electricity for the capital, which has 1.6 million households. The combined-cycle power plant began operation in December 2003 with two of GE’s 9FA.03 gas turbines (235 MW each) and an Alstom DKY224-4N4/B steam turbine (325 MW).
“Our Baymina power plant was commissioned about 15 years ago, so it was important for us to modernize our controls system,” said Hayati Yildirim, Baymina’s engineering and maintenance manager. “With GE’s hardware and software solutions, we can now react more quickly to demand conditions while reducing maintenance costs. We were also very pleased with the training provided for the new solution and look forward to continuing our strong working relationship and winning approach with GE to improve the rest of our power plant fleet operations.”
This project is the first upgrade from ALSPA P320 V1 controls — a technology originally developed by Alstom — to GE’s Mark VIe system. The upgrade, which includes engineering, commissioning and training, retains the control system footprint, the applicative process program and the input-output modules and associated wiring work on-site, and it offers a shorter outage time and less power generation loss.
In addition, a new steam turbine stress calculator, Turbomax, was implemented to help ensure accelerated startup time while improving reliability and availability. GE said that Turbomax was designed to control the tradeoff between starting time and rotor life. It also provides an increased accuracy of the stress calculation, which ensures efficient operation, the company said.
