HOUSTON — The march of next-generation natural gas turbines, by barge and by rail, carried on this week in the United States when Siemens delivered a third 637,000-pound unit to a power plant in Florida.
The German engineering conglomerate is trying to catch up to GE in the U.S. gas turbine market, as power companies are demanding their manufacturers link high power capacity with high efficiency. Siemens recently agreed to pay $7.6 billion, including an assumption of debt, for Houston’s Dresser-Rand, a firm that makes such turbines.
The gas turbine Siemens sent to the Florida Power & Light Co.’s plant in Port Everglades, Fla., has a capacity of 286 megawatts, one of which could power 500 Texas homes under normal conditions.
That’s an exponential leap from turbines in decades past, but Siemens isn’t touting its turbine’s capacity as much as its advances in thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and cooling technologies that allow the units to operate safely at higher temperatures.
“The challenge is that as every unit evolves, typically you have to go to higher temperatures for more power,” said John Wilson, Siemen’s vice president of product sales in the Americas, in an interview with Fuelfix. “The trick is to do it safely.”
Siemens’ 319-ton delivery follows GE’s news in September that it would build four of the so-called H-class gas turbines for two power plants in Texas. The units’ firing temperatures can get 200 degrees hotter than an erupting volcano. The price tag for all four: $500 million.
FPL already has two of Siemens’ H-class gas turbines and a steam turbine. H-class turbines, as the name suggests, emerged after the G-class turbines, and followed a long line of models going back to the 1960s.
Siemens said the new plant would generate $400 million in savings for its customers and $20 million in tax revenues for local governments over its 30-year lifespan. Much of that is because the turbines give more for less.
“The goal is to achieve higher efficiencies in output for minimal increases in temperatures,” Wilson said. “Operating at lower temperatures doesn’t stress the technology as much.”
FPL expects the $1.2 billion plant to come online in 2016, a few years after demolishing a 1960s-era power plant and starting to build a replacement.
The massive turbine, the ninth that Siemens has built for use in the United States, arrived at the plant in Florida on Monday, after a trip by rail in North Carolina and then by barge to Florida.
Just 13 are in operation around the globe. Siemens has contracts for 40 turbines. The engineering firm didn’t say how much money each one would fetch.
Web producer Joshua Cain contributed reporting to this article.
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