Overview
A creative problem-solving approach enables a coal plant to restart in a matter of weeks vs. months.
The challenge
When a coal plant operation in the eastern U.S. experienced a forced shutdown caused by turning gear damage, the potential for extended downtime—and significant revenue loss—was a distinct possibility. With no spare parts on site to work with, the plant’s maintenance team needed to locate the components from another source, knowing that to manufacture new parts would have taken a number of months. That’s when they called on Steam Power to help.
The solution
Our service team quickly determined the best solution to help the site get back up and running fast would be locating spare turning gear parts from another site. Despite it being the end-of-year holiday season, the team quickly scoured the U.S. customer base to find spare parts of the same model. Within a week, spares that fit the bill were identified, and the service team negotiated to have the parts delivered in short order. This would enable the plant to restart in a matter of weeks vs. months.
Outcomes
Expertise and delivery
With the support of a Steam Power technical expert on site, the plant’s team installed its turning gear parts in less than two weeks. In addition, the customer requested analysis of a turning gear issue on both the offline turbine generator unit—and a second one that had been experiencing start up problems for several years. Steam Power’s service team diagnosed the problem to be with the plant’s control system logic, which was adjusted on both units to correct the malfunction.
From the initial request for support, the plant’s unit was operational again in ~7 weeks. Alternatively, the outage could have lasted 4-5 times longer had manufacturing new components been the only option. But a creative problem-solving approach made all the difference.
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They were instrumental with helping our team diagnose and fix the root cause problems our site has had with the turning gears of not one, but two units. This is the kind of expertise we expect from an OEM, and GE delivered.
Site Engineering Manager
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