Overview
The Steam Power team was able to deliver new parts in less than half the time typically required.
The challenge
With aging plant equipment continually exposed to high-speeds and temperatures, there comes the risk of potential parts degradation. Such 'wear and tear' is inevitable over time, and a common cause of unplanned downtime for operators. Such was the case for a coal plant in the western U.S. that experienced a forced outage when several of its steam turbine blades cracked and broke away from the unit. The site’s maintenance team needed rapid response support to replace the blades and recover the 80MW that were unavailable to produce power.
The solution
Given its familiarity with the plant through a Multi-Year Service Agreement, Steam Power’s local team came up with a repair solution allowing the site to operate safely until new parts could be manufactured and delivered. By removing the steam turbine’s last stage buckets, the turbine generator unit was back up and running in just three weeks. At the same time, new buckets were ordered on an expedited timeline at the operator’s request.
Outcomes
Rapid response and accelerated production schedule shorten the outage duration
In the short term, the site avoided four months or more of downtime from the forced outage, with no spare parts available. Over the longer term, Steam Power’s service team was able to deliver the new buckets to site for installation in just five months, less than half the time of a standard production schedule of a year or sometimes more. This accelerated response allowed the plant to ramp back up to its peak generating capacity of 800MW far faster than initially expected.
Between the rapid initial response in returning the unit to service, and compressed manufacturing schedule for new parts, the site side-stepped as much as a year in potential downtime.
Case Studies
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