Overcoming triple gas turbine failure when the heat is on

A major utility in the U.S. leaned upon the experience and knowledge of a seasoned rotating equipment services provider to make a successful comeback after a series of critical gas turbine failures occurred right before peak season.

By Eric Sielaff, Vice President of Union Field Services, EthosEnergy

Every year, our power industry is facing more and more intense impact from climate change, whether the result of blizzardy, icy winter conditions or scorching summer heat waves.

In early September 2022, a heat dome settled over the U.S. West Coast and brought temperatures that set all-time record highs. The extreme heat fueled wildfires and caused major power outages before a tropical storm moved in and cooled things down. Mere months later, an arctic outbreak that occurred in February 2023 shattered records in the Northeast, including –108 F wind chill, and again put a dire strain on the region's power supply causing numerous outages.

There has never been a more important time in history for utility providers to be on their A-game and proactively addressing potential issues but imagine this real-world situation. A key unit in a power plant goes down and they are immediately facing a struggle to get it back online as quickly as possible because every day that facility remains out of action, the hit to their bottom line grows and grows.

But what if this outage happened right before the high, hot season…and not at one facility, but at three separate locations? Suddenly the difficulties up against them have more than dramatically intensified and it is said, bad things come in threes.

With labor and materials in short supply, it is of the utmost importance for major power providers facing crisis situations such as this to find a reliable third-party service provider that can offer fast-acting solutions. Experience and knowledge are a key component to get energy-producing units back up and running, or plants of this magnitude could suffer absolutely disastrous consequences to their organization.

This article features a real-world example of an emergency situation a major utility in the U.S. faced during the winter of 2021 that continued into the spring of 2022. Three outage situations. Three headaches to deal with. All within three months’ time.

Compressor failure calls for comprehensive know-how. Going into 2022, the utility knew it was going to be critical to have their units at their operational prime for the hot summer run. Why? Missing an energy dispatch could be catastrophic to a power industry business. It's hard to survive a loss of all financial gains that would have typically been made for the year when the resulting penalties kick in.

When the utility suffered a compressor failure at their peaking power plant in Indiana, they knew they had a significant job on their hands. Foreign object damage (FOD) had taken out operations of the whole compressor. This wasn't a situation where the utility's internal crew had the know-how to fix themselves. As such, the utility called upon a rotating equipment service provider – EthosEnergy – for their knowledge and expertise.

In December 2021, the service provider got to work starting with a planned short-term outage and mobilization of all the replacement components the unit needed, including new compressor blades and vanes. By early-January 2022, EthosEnergy was onsite disassembling the machine. However, the damage was far more extensive than what was previously thought. When looking downstream, the service provider discovered additional issues and determined it must migrate the utility's repairs into a major outage in order to completely resolve the situation.

Not long after the utility had come to grips with the peaking plant issues in Indiana, the organization experienced a forced outage at their combined-cycle power plant in Florida. This was due to second-stage blade failure on a GE 7FA gas turbine. Extremely high vibrations led to the machine tripping and causing extensive damage in the hot section down through the exhaust.

The utility's second power plant was scheduled to carry out a major outage in the fall of 2022, but it asked EthosEnergy to speed it forward. The challenge was that the utility needed EthosEnergy to mobilize and be on site…within just two days. Further, the spring of 2022 was one of the busiest power outage seasons the industry had seen in years due to extreme weather conditions.

Nimble and responsive, the service provider stepped up to the plate and made sure to answer the utility's challenge of a tight timetable. They were on site within two days to assess the situation and fully staffed with experienced crews ready to get the job done within four.

Unbelievable, but true, while EthosEnergy was working at power plant #2, there was a problem arising at another of the utility's facilities located in Florida. A peaking power plant started experiencing combustion issues on one of its GE 7EA gas turbine units. The utility asked the service provider to carry out a modified combustion inspection.

As it happened, EthosEnergy was dispatched nearby and able to support the third power plant with the same field service personnel. The service provider sent the team 90 miles up the road where they performed a fuel nozzle change-out. A few more issues came to light, but within five days EthosEnergy had the machine up and running.

But just when everything seemed to be on track for completing the major outage, more problems arose for the utility.

A week after EthosEnergy had demobilized from the combined-cycle power plant in Florida, the facility experienced an explosion and resulting fire. Fortunately, nobody was injured, and the service provider would come to discover that it was not a result of the previous work they had conducted on behalf of the utility. However, there were understandable concerns about what had transpired and why.

Once again, EthosEnergy was able to mobilize their team within two days. On inspection, the service provider ascertained that there was a crack in the atomizing air vessel containing the filter strainer.

As such, EthosEnergy launched a 30-day outage and essentially stripped everything down. The service provider repaired and refurbished the machine, replaced combustion components and various other items, and got the unit back up and running.

For EthosEnergy, safety is of the utmost importance, as it also was for this particular utility. It was a great achievement for the service provider to not only have answered the call at these three sites, but to have done so without one safety issue.

The agility and flexibility demonstrated by EthosEnergy's field services teams ensured all three of the utility's facilities were fully operational in time for the key summer season. This was a season that saw particularly high demand in 2022 due to scorching temperatures and one in which every one of the client's units were able to run each and every day.