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GE's New Natural Gas Power Generation Portfolio Garners $1.2 Billion in Orders
Green Technology Featured Articles
September 27, 2012

GE's New Natural Gas Power Generation Portfolio Garners $1.2 Billion in Orders

By Cheryl Kaften
TMCnet Contributor

This week, General Electric introduced a comprehensive portfolio of equipment for the utility industry in 60 hertz countries—including the United States, Japan, and Saudi Arabia—with the promise that the new product line has been “designed to deliver highly efficient baseload power, while pairing cleaner-burning natural gas with renewable resources.”  


The innovative GE FlexEfficiency 60 portfolio, which offers outputs ranging from 185 megawatts (MW) to 300 MW, comprises:

  • Two new large-block heavy duty gas turbines (7F 7-series)
  • Enhancements to two existing GE gas turbines (7F 5-series)
  • An enhanced D-17 steam turbine
  • A new H26 hydrogen-cooled generator
  • Mark VIe Integrated Control System plant controls

GE also announced that the company already has secured nearly $1.2 billion in new orders for FlexEfficiency 60 technology for projects in the United States, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

“Today’s announcement positions GE with the broadest, most comprehensive gas turbine portfolio, delivering a combination of record-setting efficiency and flexibility. Our expanded portfolio of large block gas turbines enables us to meet the complex and diverse energy and resource needs of our global customers today and in the future,” commented Paul Browning, president and CEO of General Electric’s Thermal Products business.

At the heart of the new portfolio is the FlexEfficiency 60 Combined-Cycle Power Plant, which GE claims is the most flexible and most efficient power plant of its kind—with the capability to reach greater than 61 percent thermal efficiency. This record-breaking efficiency, the company says, will save fuel, reduce emissions and save money for power companies.

Like its 50-hertz counterpart—the FlexEfficiency 50 Plant introduced in 2011—the FlexEfficiency 60 Plant is able to rapidly increase or decrease its power output in response to fluctuations in wind and solar power, enabling the integration of more renewable resources onto the power grid.

 “This is a great milestone for our natural gas portfolio. We stated a year ago that we would bring our FlexEfficiency technology to our customers in places such as the U.S., Middle East, Japan and Brazil, and today we delivered,” said Steve Bolze, president and CEO of GE Power & Water. “We continue to invest in and build the broadest gas-fueled power generation portfolio in the industry. From 1-megawatt distributed power to 300-megawatt baseload power, GE technology helps meet the power needs of people everywhere in the world.”

FlexEfficiency 60 technology will be manufactured and tested at GE’s largest gas turbine plant in Greenville, South Carolina.

The newest member of GE’s Ecomagination portfolio, the FlexEfficiency 60 Plant is configured to take on tough environmental challenges, avoiding up to 56,000 metric tons of carbon emissions per year relative to existing technology. GE estimates that, If just one equivalent-size coal plant were replaced with the FlexEfficiency 60 Plant, the offset carbon emissions would be 2.6 million metric tons per year,—the equivalent of 500,000 U.S. cars coming off the road.

Expanded technology

Power grids around the world are split into two frequencies—50 hertz (Europe, much of Asia and Africa) and 60 hertz (North America, much of South America, Saudi Arabia, southern Japan, Korea, Taiwan). GE first developed FlexEfficiency technology for customers in the 50-hertz world. The FlexEfficiency 60 portfolio marks the expansion of this groundbreaking technology to the rest of the world, allowing efficient partnering of natural gas and renewable energy.

The $1.2 billion in new sales comprises orders for 19 gas turbines—13 for the 7F 5-series gas turbine and six for the new, larger 7F 7-series gas turbine introduced today. The 7F 7-series builds on the success of the 7F 5-series and GE’s F-class technology and is based on years of experience in GE’s Aviation and power generation businesses.

Paul Browning, president and CEO, GE Thermal Products business, said, “Today’s announcement positions GE with the broadest, most comprehensive gas turbine portfolio, delivering a combination of record-setting efficiency and flexibility. Our expanded portfolio of large block gas turbines enables us to meet the complex and diverse energy and resource needs of our global customers today and in the future.”

Below is a breakdown of the FlexEfficiency 60 Portfolio projects announced this week:

  • Chubu Electric Power, Japan—GE will ship six 7F 7-series gas turbines to Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc.’s Nishi-Nagoya thermal power plant in Nagoya city, Japan. The plant will support the government’s initiative for cleaner, more-efficient energy production. It will produce more than 2,300 megawatts in combined-cycle operation. GE will supply the six 7F 7-series gas turbines to Toshiba (News - Alert), the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the project. The first unit will be shipped in February 2016, with all six turbines expected to be in service by March 2018. In addition to the equipment, GE will supply parts for the project.
  • Riyadh Power Plant 12, Saudi Arabia—GE will supply eight 7F 5-series gas turbine-generators for the expansion of Saudi Electricity Company’s (SEC (News - Alert)) PP12 project, which will add more than 1,990 megawatts of power to help SEC meet its future electricity demands when it enters commercial operation in 2015. PP12 will be the largest air-cooled combined-cycle project in Saudi Arabia, using GE’s F-class gas turbines, and will be the first application of 7F 5-series gas turbines in the region. The gas turbines will burn natural gas provided by the Saudi national oil and gas company Saudi Aramco. The machines will be equipped with GE’s latest dry low NOx combustion technology to reduce emissions, extend maintenance intervals and enable the plant to operate more flexibly.
  • Cherokee Clean Air Clean Jobs Project, Colorado—Two GE 7F 5-series gas turbines will power the Cherokee project in Denver, which will convert an existing coal plant into a cleaner burning, natural gas combined-cycle facility. The Cherokee repowering project is part of Colorado’s Clean Air Clean Jobs Act passed in 2010, which helps retire or retrofit the state’s coal plants. The new plant will be owned and operated by the Public Service Company of Colorado, a wholly owned subsidiary of Xcel Energy, a major U.S. electric and natural gas company. GE expects to ship the gas turbines in the fourth quarter of 2013, with commercial operation beginning in the fourth quarter of 2015. GE also will supply technical direction, training and spare parts.
  • Hess Corporation—GE will provide two 7F 5-series gas turbines and a GE D11 steam turbine to Hess Corporation for an upcoming project in the United States.
  • Customer in Western U.S.—GE will provide one 7F 5-series gas turbine for an industrial application in the Western United States. This new combined-cycle power plant will repower coal fired steam turbines with cleaner, flexible natural gas.

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Edited by Brooke Neuman


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