GE Secures $1.2bn in New Orders for ‘Most Efficient’ Natural Gas Power Plant Technology

GE has announced a natural gas power plant, the FlexEfficiency 60, that it says avoids up to 56,000 metric tons of carbon emissions per year relative to existing technology. GE also said it has secured about $1.2 billion in new orders for FlexEfficiency 60 technology for projects in the US, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

The FlexEfficiency 60 combined-cycle power plant, which GE calls the “most efficient power plant of its kind,” has the capacity to reach greater than 61 percent thermal efficiency.

Like its 50-hertz counterpart, the FlexEfficiency 50 plant that GE introduced in 2011, the FlexEfficiency 60 plant rapidly increases or decreases its power output in response to fluctuations in wind and solar power. This enables power companies to integrate more renewable resources onto the power grid, and saves them money and fuel, according to GE.

GE says if just one equivalent-size coal plant was replaced with the ecomagination-qualified FlexEfficiency 60 plant, the offset carbon emissions would be 2.6 million metric tons per year.

FlexEfficiency 60 technology will be manufactured and tested at a gas turbine manufacturing facility in Greenville, S.C.

The FlexEfficiency 60 portfolio will include four gas turbines. The newest is the 7F 7-series, which GE says has record-breaking flexibility and efficiency in combined cycle. The 7F-7 series and the 7F 5-series are available to customers now.

A new 7F 9-series, which GE says will be configured to be the largest and most efficient in the portfolio, and an enhanced 7F 3-series will be available in the future.

GE says the combined portfolio offers the broadest power range of advanced gas turbines in the industry, from 185 MW to more than 300 MW.

The $1.2 billion in new sales is comprised of orders for 19 gas turbines: 13 for the 7F 5-series gas turbine and six for the 7F 7-series gas turbine. GE will supply:

• Six 7F 7-series gas turbines to Chubu Electric Power Co.’s Nishi-Nagoya 2,300 MW thermal power plant in Nagoya city, Japan. GE will supply the six gas turbines to Toshiba, the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the project. The first unit will be shipped in February 2016; all six turbines are expected to be in service by March 2018.
• Eight 7F 5-series gas turbine-generators for the expansion of Saudi Electricity Company’s (SEC) Riyadh Power Plant 12 project, which will add more than 1,990 MW of power to help SEC meet electricity demands when it enters commercial operation in 2015. The plant 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.
• Two GE 7F 5-series gas turbines will power the Cherokee Clean Air Clean Jobs project in Denver, Colo., which will convert an existing coal plant into a cleaner burning, natural gas combined-cycle facility. GE expects to ship the gas turbines in the fourth quarter of 2013, with commercial operation beginning in the fourth quarter of 2015.
• Two 7F 5-series gas turbines and a GE D11 steam turbine to Hess Corporation for an upcoming project in the US.
• One 7F 5-series gas turbine for an unnamed industrial application customer in the Western US.