Demand for power in the United States is projected to increase between 2 and 4 percent per year for the next 10 years based on various studies. At the same time, the rise in environmental regulatory restrictions has made it increasingly difficult and expensive for utilities to meet these growing power demands with traditional power sources.
During the 1960’s and 70’s hundreds of gas turbine electric generating units were installed in the United States. Many are now approaching the end of their useful economic lives owing to increased maintenance and fuel costs. With the major advances in both fuel efficiency and exhaust gas emission quality power producers are looking toward the repowering of existing plants with modern gas turbines such as the FT8. (Day and Koehler, 1988)
This paper describes the design of Turbo Power and Marine Systems’ (Turbo Power) FT8® repowering package for the present FT4 powered plant at Public Service Electric and Gas Company’s (PSE&G) Burlington Generating Station. Given the objectives of minimum design effort and minimum field construction time, the retrofit package provides an optimal blending of existing FT4 and standard FT8 equipment. Performance, impact on operation, reliability, and availability of the FT8 industrial gas turbine were also important considerations in the retrofit design.
