This news is classified in: Traditional Energy Power Generation
Apr 4, 2018
GE’s Power Services business (GE) signed a milestone agreement with Edison, part of Electricité de France (EDF Group) and Italy’s second largest integrated energy company, to enhance performance at its Candela combined-cycle power station in Puglia. The deal encompasses hardware upgrades to the existing GE 9F.03 gas turbine, increasing the plant’s output to 400 megawatts (MW) and increasing the global efficiency by about 1 percentage point. In addition, GE’s predictive maintenance software and cybersecurity solution will improve asset visibility, reliability and security, while decreasing operating and maintenance costs at the plant.
“Aligning power generation capacity and transmission systems to meet energy demand while respecting pre-defined security and quality levels has become a critical issue in Italy and most liberalized electricity markets around the world,” said Nicola Monti, executive vice president of Edison—Power Asset & Engineering. “The new Capacity Market system, which Italy will implement in 2018, will reward utilities for their capacity availability. For this reason, it’s essential to continually improve our assets’ performance and availability with the latest technologies and digital solutions. GE is helping us to increase fuel savings, generation capacity and, more importantly, our competitiveness in an evolving Italian energy market.”
GE will install its industry-leading Advanced Gas Path (AGP) technology, part of its Fleet360* platform of total plant solutions. The AGP will deliver upgrade performance and operational flexibility with more output, efficiency and availability.
“The hardware and software solutions GE will implement during the major outage will deliver immediate benefits to Edison,” said Michael Rechsteiner, CEO of GE’s Power Services business in Europe. “Our AGP technology will help position Edison to ‘win’ and remain competitive with their existing fleets. Moreover, the predictive maintenance and advanced defense system will protect Edison’s critical infrastructure and controls, in compliance with the forthcoming Capacity Market and cybersecurity regulations.”
AGP can deliver benefits on a global scale to customers both in mature markets—including the U.S. and western Europe where efficiency and flexibility are crucial—as well as in growing markets like MEA, Asia, China and Eastern Europe where more MW are needed for the grid and industrial use. While GE’s 7F gas turbine customer fleet alone is enjoying the benefits of nearly 300 AGP solutions, the company expanded the customer value of AGP technology by making it available to power producers that operate the 9F. The AGP installation at Edison’s Candela power plant marks the first of this kind of implementation in South Europe.
